It's Just Kenny!

[My Life] Thank you for crotch watching…

2012-01-31T10:30:00.000-05:00

It is always good to take a trip down memory lane, well in most cases. This morning I was going through some old blogs that I had posted on a social networking website from 2009, talking about when I would travel back and forth from Brooklyn to Staten Island everyday on the ferry to be with grandmother while she was in the Burn Unit ICU in Staten Island University Hospital. I hated the commute in every which way. An hour to get to Staten Island and another hour to get the hospital was draining on my mental state and most days I was deeply depressed or angry.

Before this accident, I’ve never been on the ferry. It was a new and unwelcoming experience. The massive rude crowds of people rushing in trying to trample over you for a damn seat and afterwards engaging in all sorts of loud personal conversations that would make Heather Del Rio blush. Boy, Oh boy… Most of the time I would buy a coffee and zone out with my mp3 player blasting some angry hip hop music.

On one such afternoon, I was in my own little world oblivious to anything around me. As I drifted in and out of a cat nap, I never noticed a man taking a seat right in front of me. I was wearing some fitted jeans, not the tight ass yeast infection stuff these people are walking around in these days, but something that actually fitted my body and wasn’t half way off my ass. I usually sit like most guys do. Feet planted firmly on the floor with my legs open, which is nothing special at all. Midway into the voyage, I suddenly felt there were eyes on me. Have you ever gotten the feeling that you were being watched? Not a comfortable feeling at all is it? When I looked up, the gentleman that was sitting across from me eyes were fixated on my crotch. Yeah… I wanted to tell him that it doesn’t do tricks, but thought it would be unwise to do so. So I snapped my fingers and he popped out of whatever daze he was in and looked me in the face.

The one thing my friends all tell me is that my facial expressions show my feelings no matter how much I try to hide it. At that moment, I didn’t have a warm expression on my face. He turned bright red with what I assume was embarrassment, and unfolded the newspaper to read. Now I could laugh about it, but at the moment I was heated. I started to wonder if I needed a giant belt buckle that said: No eyes beyond this point! But I guess that would defeat the purpose now wouldn’t it. Since I wrote the blog, I’ve taken great care in covering that part of my body while on mass transit. Nothing is worse than a wondering erection where a woman screams pervert and your face is on the front page of the Daily News or someone watching in between your legs like its Direct TV.

Stuff like this makes me really make me want to get a car, to avoid nonsense like this.

Kenny.

[Lifestyles] For the sake of employment…

2012-01-28T12:16:00.000-05:00

I wanted to share a story from when I was working a few years back… There was this young lady who was a supervisor and there was a major incident that was brought to my attention and needed to be dealt with since I was the senior supervisor in the office. I will let this be known now, that I was a complete asshole to most people in the office at the time because there was a lot of pressure on me to make sense of madness and like they say… Shit rolls downhill. So, most people caught a glimpse of my wrath when I was not pleased for whatever reason. Hell I am surprised how many people talked to me after the job was over. I was in my office space, when she approached me. I asked her to sit and began to talk about what happen. Without giving out details, she had messed up and as I was scolding her about her responsibilities especially since she was a supervisor. Yes, my words were harsh, but if it came from anyone else it would’ve been her job. As I spoke, she began to tear up and I could see she was trying really hard not to cry.

I stopped. I was not happy at all by this. I told her the following:

I know you’re not about to cry. Go into the bathroom and clean yourself up and we will talk more. You can show these weak emotions to those who are your superior because it makes you seem unstable and unable to do your job. You’re not being fired, but don’t put doubt in my mind. Do you want that? ::she shook her head:: Then go…

With that being said, she got up went to the bathroom and came back. Yeah it could’ve been a big argument or she could’ve gone and filed a complaint against me, but I just told her the truth. If you are perceived as an ineffective person at a job, you are replaceable. I kept her from getting fired and even help her move into other positions that was beneficial to her. The truth is that this day and age is tough. Jobs are slowly coming back and there are mobs (me being one of them) trying to make a strong enough impression so that people in power can say “I want him”. When you’re a person of color, there is 10 times the pressure to be stronger, wiser, tougher, smarter than our counterparts. If you’re not, then you have to settle for whatever minimum wage job out there that can’t even pay the rent. Throughout my adult life I’ve held different types of employment (sadly, this is the longest stretch of employment that I have encountered). From retail to office positions and the politics are the same everywhere you go.

The one thing I learned from that job was that sometimes there are asshole out there (me being one of them) that can make your job the living hell. From the customers who complain for the sake of complaining to the dumbass placed in management positions. No one is going to care about you if you can’t produce. What you need to focus on is if you are willing to accept the way things are or risk go on to greener pastures. A risk that could bring you less headache or finical uncertainty… Think about it for a second, what are you willing to put up with for the sake of employment?

Kenny.

[Lifestyles] Grade Pending

2012-01-23T15:00:00.026-05:00

Listen close and you will hear a story of great woe. Just like the fairy tales of old, this tale begins with the phrase used so many times before with once upon a time in a little place called Canarise Brooklyn. It was a quiet night in which a BOY traveled to and fro in search of a great meal. With his stomach growling he entered a place called Fortune Cookies Chinese Restaurant. As the BOY entered the tiny little shop, he did not notice the NYC Health Department “Grade Pending” sign in front, because if he did it would have warned him of the troubles to come. The BOY gave the female shop keeper his order of lo mein with fried chicken and started to count the minutes before he can quench his hunger. As he sat and waited, one of the workers came into view. He was very slobbish, covered in dirt, grease and grime. Like clouds in the sky, the BOY could see patterns form on the workers apron. The BOY shuddered a bit. The worker placed a mop in his hand to the side so he could close a trash bag overflowing with rubbish. It was quite a difficult task. He took his bare hands to push everything inside so he could be able to seal the black bag. Once finished, he pulled the bag out and dragged it into the street for the garbage men to come pick it up in the wee hours of the morning. Once he returned, he entered the kitchen, dipped his hands in the container of lo mein noodles and threw it into a wok. The BOY gasped at this sight. The man, who he just seen taking his bare hands pushing down garbage, was now, cooking his meal without washing his hand. Sicken to the core, the BOY fled in hopes to never return, but he had realized one thing too late. He had eaten from this same place several times before…

The moral, if you can call it that is…

DO NOT FUCKING EAT AT FORTUNE COOKIE CHINESE RESTAURANT LOCATED AT 9004 AVEUNE B IN BROOKLYN, N.Y.!!!

Of course there is more to this story. A while back, I wrote a blog called: B is for Failure, in which I talked about a Subways restaurant on my block that had a B-rating from the Health department. After seeing that rating, I went on the health department’s website and did my own little research about other places in my neighborhood. Many places had sever violations and it made me really wonder had these places can get away with this. In this little adventure, I did my research once again on the placed named above and was shocked to what I had discovered and the loop holes used so that the public is not aware of this travesty. On the NYC health department website you can find out how they score and grade plus there latest and previous inspections. It’s quite simple really. The age of technology is just a wonderful beast at times.

When you are on the website, you can either enter in the eatery’s name you want to find or the zip code, which in this case 11236, and it will pull up the place or all the restaurants within that area. After filtering based on cuisine type (American, Bakery, Caribbean, Chinese, etc…), I found Fortune Cookies had a “Not Yet Graded” as their current grade (When I first did the search it was actually a C grade, but it has since changed). While going through the inspections on the left side of the screen of their most recent I disgusted by what I saw. To put things in perspective here is the how the health department score violations…

From the “How we score and Grade” PDF:

The points for a particular violation depend on the health risk it poses to the public. Violations fall into three categories:

A public health hazard, such as failing to keep food at the right temperature, triggers a minimum of 7 points. If the violation can’t be corrected before the inspection ends, the

Health Department may close the restaurant until it’s fixed.

A critical violation, for example, serving raw food such as a salad without properly washing it first, carries a minimum of 5 points.

A general violation, such as not properly sanitizing cooking utensils, receives at least 2 points.

In September of last year, Fortune Cookie was graded 3 times. Once on the 10^th which added up to 62 violation points, the next on the 13^th which added up to 32 points and lastly on the 14^th with only 3 points. Lucky for the public you can actually see what they were violated for. This is a screen shot of the September 10^th list violations:

Click on image to expand size.

Personal cleanliness… does that creep anyone else out like it did me? I have to assume as a person looking at this, that it only received a 3 in there last inspection because of the city threatening to shut them down and they hired a crew of elves to come in and do there magic… maybe one of those Sookie Stackhouse fairies as well perhaps.

I began to wonder why in the hell did this place have a “Grade Pending” on its store front window when it clearly wasn’t making the grade at all. Everything was kind of confusing until I reread the PDF document. There is a part that I want to make EVERYONE aware of. Towards the bottom of the first page and the top of the second there is this:

“A restaurant has two chances to earn an A in every inspection cycle. If it doesn’t earn an A on the first inspection, it’s scored but ungraded. An inspector goes back to the restaurant unannounced, typically within a month, to inspect it again and the re-inspection is graded. If the grade is a B or C, the restaurant will receive a grade card and a grade pending card. It can post either card until it has an opportunity to be heard at the Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings Health Tribunal.

Until a restaurant has a graded inspection, it is listed as Not Yet Graded on the Health

Department website”

I underlined the most important part. A place can either post the grade they had received OR a Grade Pending sign. Establishments, unless they are shut down, can hide their score from the public!!! Ain’t that some shit right there… I was ready to let Facebook, Foursquare, Google and anyone that could hear me from my soapbox about this place. That’s another reason to love the technology age. I started to comb the internet for some reviews and frankly there were very few expect for this one Yelps. Here is the screenshot:

Click on image to expand size.

A disclaimer though… While the place reviewed was actual ANOTHER Fortune Cookies restaurant in Bensonhurst, Dyker Heights area, the review mentioned a place called Chopsticks which is right down block and provides a better service than Fortune Cookie, so I knew that she might’ve made a mistake in placing the review there. I also felt that the first review was also talking about the Fortune Cookies restaurant as well, but I am not 100% sure about that.

After being sick for months and unable to stomach even the sight of food. It is disappointing that places like this exist and even shameful that people pack them without doing any research. A few minutes can avoid hours of throwing up or much worse. I suggest that everyone out there takes a moment (especially if you live in the New York area) to review some of the fast food places that you go into everyday. What you might learn may surprise you and save your life.

Kenny.

[My Life] Fitness FAIL

2012-01-20T19:10:00.001-05:00

On January 17^th, I checked my bank account online and there was a debit from Planet Fitness of 10 dollars. I really, really started to kick myself because of it. You see, the charge wasn’t something that was shocked about getting, since I did have a membership with them. I just hated the fact that I feel like I was wasting money in a time where money is really needed. I’ve only been there once and you might have guessed it… it was t o sign up for that damn sweet membership offer. 20 dollars down, 10 dollars a month… Where can you find something like that in this day and age? Since coming back like Lazarus, where I was on the brink of death and left in an extremely weaken state, I have made great strides to improve my heath situation, but the one thing I have learned is that “the road to recovery is paved with bumps and bruises” so it’s been slow and sometimes painful to deal with. Trust me when I say that I have experienced it all over the last few months.

Since getting my gym membership, I eat all the time either at home or places like IKEA (The food there is off the chain!!!) or Wingstop which is better than any BBQ’s place around even Dallas BBQ’s right down the street in Downtown Brooklyn. I regained all the weight I had lost, go me!!! Especially since the crackish look was SOOO 1980’s. Being 6’3 and 148lbs was not a good look at all. Plus, I used to (and still have) major body issues. I thought I was too big, while others around me thought I was getting way too skinny for comfort. Even my mother told me that she thought I might be anorexic. Yeah, it was that serious… So now, I have a book bag ready full of the necessaries of the gym, but I can’t seem to drag my ass over there which is only a 15 minute bus ride. It’s been either one thing or the other. The excuses have become: I am waiting for my brother to come with me since I don’t know/remember how to use the equipment; the weather outside is way too cold for me to go out; I am going to go first thing in the morning before the sunrise to avoid the muscle jocks that get off on looking freaks of nature; etc, etc, etc…

I do have other motives to getting in shape. This coming summer I want to go back to Robert Moses beach out in Fire Island which is clothing option. Yup, a nude beach and I want to be in the best physical shape so when I walk around with Mr. Happy flopping about and I don’t want to be self conscience about my increasing gut. Vanity… Such a wonderful sin, isn’t it? Beside the whole eating right and regularly, going to the doctor and taking my medications every day on time, I just really want to be one of those guys that will make jaws drop with a banging body.

It’s not going to happen overnight. I know that. It takes time, patience and all the other hippie crap you hear from the infomercials hocking some overpriced equipment. I just need to get that motivation to actually do it. But I will tell you this… If I don’t go to the gym before February 17^th, I am going to cancel my membership and get one of those Tae Bo tapes.

Kenny.

[Lifestyles] A Billion Broken Shards

2011-09-11T21:20:00.004-04:00

I can’t believe it’s been 10 years already. You hear people say that all the time in an abstract way on how time pushes forward while they’re somewhat stuck looking at one still moment in time. In the craziness of the day I still remember every little thing that happen and the emotions that I was going through. Well the emotions that we were all going through in some form or another. I wrote this blog about 5 years ago in which I posted and reposted to several social networking site as each anniversary passed. After this year, I will retire it. As a part of growing and moving on, I need to work on moving passed EVERYTHING that happened that month. I was only 20 when this happen, just a kid that was barely out of high school and had no understanding of what the world was trying to offer me, but on this day 10 years ago all that changed and I was forced just like the rest of the country to walk with fear.

So here is my story about that day…

I was dreaming… I don’t remember what it was about but I knew I was dreaming until it happen. That damn phone call. It was 7:30 in the morning and let’s be honest WHO would want to receive a call that early. Rolling over I looked at the Caller ID and it was a familiar number. My co-worker Jerry Garcia that just started working at the same store in Queens as I did with my Best-friend as our boss.

“Hey Kenny… Can you do me a huge favor, please… Tell Kobe that I can’t come in today because I can’t get anyone to drive me into the City and Queens… and that I will try to come in tomorrow if I could get a ride to pick up my check.”

Pissed, I said, “You know that Kobe has a Cell phone, why the hell are you calling my ass for?”

“Kenny come on can you do me this favor?” he whined.

“Whatever, Jerry I will talk to you later” I said hanging up the phone. I tossed the covers aside, went into the kitchen made breakfast. My grandmother was in her usually seat in the Living room watching Walker Texas Ranger and she was hooting and hollering as Chuck Norris kicked some bad guys ass. Once I finished with breakfast I brushed my teeth and headed back into my room to lay back down.

The timer on the TV turned itself on and the WB11 morning news was staring back at me. Ironically they were doing the weather forecast and talked about how beautiful the day was going to be. But of course no one knew what was to come beside those that put it in action. In a flash I turned the television off and turned on Z100, hoping to hear some music that would put me in a better mood. It was 8:30, when I closed my eyes hoping that would at least get another 30 minutes of uninterrupted sleep before I had to get ready for work and be there on time at 11, but then the announcement came.

DJ Elvis Duran of the Z-morning Zoo broke into a song and announced that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center building a few minutes ago. I opened my eyes and grabbed the remote and turned on the TV. It was true. As I flip through every channel that had images of one of the World Trade Center buildings on fire.

“Great…” I whispered. I just knew that nothing good was going to come from this.

It was just before 9am when I called my boss/best friend. He had just gotten into the store and from his voice he was nursing a hangover.

“Hey, Kobe” I said, somewhat extra cheerful.

“What happen?” he said automatically. After being best friends for so long he knew my moods.

“Well, I got a call from Jerry this morning and he wanted me to tell you that he wasn’t coming in today and –“… before I could say anything else he started screaming.

“THAT STUPID MOTHERFUC-“ Well you get the point he was pissed and swore up and down that Jerry’s ass was out and would be fired as soon as he finished his coffee. Just before I was about to hang up, I remember the plane crash. I took the remote from my grandmother, which she cursed at me about and turned it to network television.

“Kobe, have you seen the news yet?” I asked

“No… what’s up?” he answered.

“Well going home might be a problem for you because some plane crashed into the World Trade Center…”

“What!!!” he exclaimed.

He turned on the televisions in his store and he stared at the same images that I was staring at in my home. “Oh shit” he exclaimed. Flames and smoke were gushing out of the tall structure as the people below stood in shock.

“I wonder how something like-“ It felt like it was slow motion. Before I could complete my sentence we both saw the second plane crash into the World Trade Center and explode. The words: Oh my God…escaped my lips. It was at that point I knew there was much more to this than just being a coincidence.

“Kenny did you see that? Did you see that?” he said. I couldn’t speak as the second tower began to explode in fire and what seems like a billion broken shards of glass crashing to the ground below.

“Kobe I don’t believe it?” I finally said.

“But you saw it too, right? You saw that plane hit the building right?”

“Yeah I did… I think I did…” I said confirming not only what Kobe saw but what I’ve seen as well. “Kobe I will call you back...” I said after a short pause.

My first thought was my mother. Was she at work or was she at the World Trade Center? I just need to make sure. Since she was looking for a new job and most of the people in her company were now employed at the World Trade. I grabbed the phone again and called my mother’s cell phone and to my shock, I heard it ringing in a pair of discard jeans on my bedroom floor. I had forgotten that I had used it that weekend and forgot to give it back to her. This day of all days, why did I do something stupid like that? I dialed her work number and all it did was ring and go to her voicemail. After the 7^th time I was in a panic. She had to be alright… I kept telling myself and my grandmother was no help. She didn’t understand what was really happening or why I was stressing out the way I was.

“It’s nothing…” she kept saying to me in her deep southern drawl. “Your mama ain’t there she is at work”

But I knew better. As quickly as I could I grabbed some jeans and a shirt and raced out of the door leaving my grandmother no longer watching the broadcast but Walker, Texas Ranger.

Nothing worked. The trains were at a standstill and tempers at the train station were at its breaking point. No one knew anything and the token booth operator was at loss for words. I ran liked the wind to catch the B12 bus to take me across Brooklyn so I can at least find be closer to Downtown where I was praying my mother would be. The bus was crowded full of more people that were more confused than I was. The rumor mill was fluttering around that there more planes crashing and one crashed into a building in Washington D.C. The bus just passed Kings county hospital when some one said that one of the buildings collapsed. That was the first time I cried. Tears were streaming down my face, and a woman patted my back telling me that it was going to be okay. I couldn’t tell you what she looked like or how she sounded, I just remembered her patting my back and me saying something about needed my mother. When the bus finally made it to Flatbush Ave., I was one of the first ones out and rushed to the connected bus stop. At the B41 bus stop on Flatbush Ave. and Parkside Ave. I waited with another crowd of people looking to get into a cramped bused. The bus driver told everyone that there were no buses heading to downtown Brooklyn at that time. Men and women were cursing and screaming at each other, the bus driver and at the world. I couldn’t let this set back stop me. I started to run up Flatbush Ave. and towards Downtown. With my mother’s cell phone in hand I called her job again and received no answer.

As I passed the Prospect Park train station on the Q train I started to notice something. There were no cars traveling around me anymore and the people coming towards me were not longer white or black… they were gray. Gray people. These Gray people were everywhere as I raced passed the infamous Prospect Park.

As I reached Grand Army Plaza, I saw a female police officer and went up to her.

“Excuse me officer, is it true? Did a building collapsed?” I asked breathing hard from running and I feared that I would faint right there.

“I don’t know…” she said trying to direct people around. As I started again towards Downtown when the officer grabbed my arm and pulled me back.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“I got to find my mother” I said, trying to pull my arm away.

“It’s a mess down there, you will only be in the way…” she told me, but I didn’t listen or care about what she was trying to say to me. I had only one objective and that was my mother. And so I moved on. Rushing through the sea of gray people, I stopped at an electric store, where a friend of mine was working located on Atlantic Ave. and Flatbush Ave. The store was crowded with people hovering around the television and buying radios, batteries and other things. My friend Mathew took me into the backroom where I was trying to hold myself together. On the television in the back room I saw the last tower fall to the earth and people just started to cry and gasp. The Mayor was calling for those to leave lower Manhattan and I was scared out of my mind. I looked up at Mathew and he looked down at me and we were speechless.

His mind was on his wife and daughter and I was completely blank. I didn’t know what to do or say. Before I knew it I was out of the door and back on my journey. Downtown Brooklyn was a mad house full of people running from the imaginary boogeyman that was now in your lives. The Gray people were in numbers now, some bleeding, some crying but all covered in ash. As I made my way through the crowded Fulton Street Mall area in Downtown, Brooklyn I tried to close my mind to what was going on around me.

My mother was standing in front of her job. When I saw her, I couldn’t let her go. It was embarrassing to my mother because I just held her and kissed each of her cheeks over and over again right in front of her Boss. She smiled.

“Why didn’t you pick up the phone?” I asked my face flooded with tears.

“I wasn’t at my desk… we were at the window and saw the planes hit… so we got the hell out of the building. When I got a chance to call the house, your grandmother said that you were coming down here to get your MAMA!!!” she said laughing.

I do not remember the way home or what we talked about, but I do remember that I held her hand all the way home. Over the next few days we found out that many of her friends and old co-workers died that morning in the may lay. I didn’t feel anything for the many died that morning at first; my main focus was my mother and she was with me. But as the images of the destruction started to be over played on national television displaying families, spouses and others calling for their missing love one that was surely dead, it made me wonder what was going to happen next. Even now I am still wondering what is next…

Kenny.

[Lifestyles] Celebrities and Porn: A Love Story.

2011-09-02T13:35:00.011-04:00

Sam Jones III. Ever heard of the guy? If you ever watched the first couple of seasons of Smallville you might have. He played the only recurring African-American character on the show until he was written off. You might know him from another show. He also played the gay little brother to Mekhi Phifer character Greg Pratt in the acclaimed series ER. He has spent 10 years of his life in front of the camera in other small roles and I didn’t know who this man was until I looked at his Wikipedia page. So you might be asking yourself, why am I bringing this up now? Well… I stumbled on to something interesting about the man, you see he has something in common with the likes of Kim Kardashian, Paris Hilton and other wealthy D-List celebrities out there. He has a sex tape. In 2009, while I was dealing with my own personal issues, he was out there pushing a sex tape with himself and his girlfriend, one of Hugh Heffner’s ex girlfriends. Now it’s his life and what he does with his life is his business at the end of the day, but can I ask a question? When did having sex in front of a camera guarantee you a career in mainstream media? Or why are celebrities embarking in this route in keeping their names in the limelight? 10 years ago, if you were not in the porn industry where you are paid to have sex, having your private moments exposed for the world to see was an embarrassment. Now, people build careers off of them without remorse.

Now, I have seen Porn movies that attempt to merge acting and graphic sex. Some are successful like that “NOT” series of videos (i.e. “Not The Office”, “Not 3’s Company”, “Not The Cosby Show”, or “Not Good Times”), while others tend to leave me wanting to jab Q-Tips into my ears to spare myself the pain of hearing annoying dialogue. Like come on, how many times are you going to look into the cupboard and “inspect” something? Just please bend over so we can get this show on the road for pete sake. Maybe it’s just my impatient personality kicking in. I really don’t want to come off holier than thou on this, because I have no problem watching any of these videos. None at all… But it kills me when I see people who have no real talent, being famous for what they have done laying down with their feet up! Let’s keep it real, would American really care about Kim Kardashian or Paris Hilton if they weren’t seen deep throating a penis? Sometimes you just have to shake your head and wonder…

Kenny.

[My Life] Punch Drunk Kenny

2011-09-01T17:25:00.002-04:00

I like drinking alcohol. The first few questions I ask when I enter a party is: “Where is the alcohol?” and “Who is making my drink?” Damn it, I am 30 and enjoy the moments where I can get so wasted that I look forward to waking up in some back alley, peeing on myself while recovering some repressed memories. But sadly, way too many people have seen me drunk over the last few years. I really didn’t mean for that to happen, but when you’re invited to house parties and bar events, where one thing would lead to another… Shit happens! Plus, I hate being drunk around people who either bother me or I have some kind of issue with because at some point in the night, the temporary wall I’ve built in my mind to hold back my true feelings will come crumbling down and yeah… it’s not pretty. Not pretty at all, but I can’t help myself. I am frankly not a “Let’s talk about my feelings” type a guy. I mostly keep everything in because I find that it’s better to just let it go for the moment but always remember what was done… but after that 4^th or 5^th rum and coke, well… The worst I’ve been was at a house party, where I drank that host of the party’s sister “Witches Brew” and had to piece together what the hell happen from videos that were posted on facebook the next few days. It seemed that I went all out and just told EVERYONE how I felt about them one by one and most of my comment were VERY inappropriate (Someone cried and block me on facebook because of it). It was a mess, especially since we had all worked together at the time and when I came into work that Monday morning it was all over the office. Another instance was me getting into a fist fight, but that’s a whole other story…

So now I try to minimize my consumption since my funds are limited and avoid trouble in its many forms. However, that leads me into a new dilemma. For some reason all this summer I have been, as a former co-worker put it so lovely, in “Super Save A Negro” mode when I go out drinking. The company I’ve kept has gotten themselves so fucked up on the sauce that I had to make sure that they didn’t get arrested, sexually assaulted or too sick to stand so I could get them home safely. All of this ends me indulging in my own fun, which may not be such a bad thing in the long run. Maybe it’s just in my nature to care about my friends because at first I didn’t mind, but it became a constant thing, where babysitting was my job.

UUGGGHHH!!!

Sometimes it is not worth being known as the GOOD GUY or PROTECTOR!!!

Tomorrow night, I am going to go to this bar in lower Manhattan called the Iron Horse. It has a nice mix crowd and the bartenders are really cool for the most part and I have been going there for the last few months since one of my friends Andre put me on to the place. In fact I had blogged about the bar before in a blog called Crash. I am going there to chat with friends, make new ones and hopefully not feel like I have to keep a cape and red tights the “S” on the chest just in case something happens. Alcohol can be a wonderful at times, but a beast on the mind the next day…

Kenny.

[My Life] Summer Gone By

2011-09-01T07:35:00.006-04:00

I can’t believe that it is already September. Labor Day is right around the corner and the 10^th anniversary of September 11^th shortly after that, it is very clear to be that time is moving faster than I wish. Luckily, with all the over hyped drama from Hurricane Irene and the East Coast Earthquake subsiding, I am settling into a new sense of what the hell am I going to do now. With the Summer of Kenny almost over, something I am not going to miss at all even with all the adventures I embarked in, I am trying to figure out what path I should make for myself. But for a brief second let’s have a review.

Here is a summary of some of my Summer of Kenny experiences:

· Reconnecting with my EX, which naturally ended badly. People are your EX for a reason!!! Why, OH WHY did I not learn that lesson sooner!
· Being in love triangle that left me the odd man out. Great Job, Kenny! I never have to wonder why I am single again!
· Being naked somewhere, which was actually a fun thing, so I really don’t have any problems with that. There is a lot behind that of course…
· Thrown up on, pushed, kicked, screamed at… and that’s just by my friends! Imagine what someone would do if they hated me?
· Arguing with strange people in strange places and having it video recorded. I am just waiting for something to pop off on Youtube any day now…
· Stalked by store security at several stores!!! Do I seriously look like Dangerous Black man X???
· Still unemployed!!!!!
· Let’s not forget being sick in bed at least once a week unable to move. Those are fun moments for sure!!!

As the weather begin to change and my allergies take over leaving my face so swollen that I end up looking like the great pumpkin, I got to keep some momentum in the movements I am making going. Not only just me, but for my family. I have to continue to be strong even when I am so scared that all I want to do is hide in the corner wishing that everything would just fix itself. So as this season of Summer of Kenny ends to be picked up again next year and the Autumn of Kenny’s Discontent about to begin in just a few weeks all I have to say is…

Reprise the theme song and roll the credits!

Kenny.

[My Life] Summer of Kenny.

2011-06-21T13:16:00.002-04:00

At this very moment, we say good bye to spring time and say hello to summer. About damn time if you ask me. Last summer, I was stressed with work and the summer before that I was in and out of hospitals and nursing homes as my grandmother was going through the healing process from the accident, so as you might’ve guess there was no “ME” time to be had. While I am still on my job hunt and fine tuning my budget, for the first time in a long time, I am going to enjoy the weather while it last and this week it is suppose to be really good. I think this summer I am going to stay single or at least limit myself to just maintaining sex friends. After months of dealing with the emotional rollercoaster of a relationship, I am ready to change everything up and enjoy being free of any attachments.

This past weekend, I went with my best friend, some of his friends and roommates to the beach. It was a good time for the most part. One of our traveling companions, who I will call Lex, worked on my last good nerve. Annoying, loud, touchy… all the things that instantly make me what to start cutting limbs, but I used this thing called self control and refrained from anything that would land me in jail. Oh and by the way, do not call yourself a serious graphic designer if all you use MS Paint and cannot name other design programs… Fucktard, but I digress… I spent the day sprawled out on the sand with a book The Moonlight Earth By, Christopher Rice. I watched some of the beach bodies floating around which made me realized how much my body was not up to par with most and not caring… Well, I do care a bit, even though I am slim I would want to have a defined chest and abs instead of the keg I have developing now. I joked, ate some snacks which included honey melons and even went down to the shore line. Everything was great until…

This is what I hate. If you’re going somewhere with a group of people then you need to leave that place with the same group of people unless you state something different beforehand. An hour before we left, Lex grabbed his belongings and wonder off without a word to us. Somehow there was some confusion because my best friend thought he had put everything of value like his wallet and car keys in Lex’s book bag. Since Lex did not have a cell phone, it was urgent to locate him. After some time of searching the beach, we figured out that we actually had everything with us EXPECT for Lex, so we took a vote.

Look around once more or get in the car and go back to the house.

My vote was to get in the car and bounce. If you’re grown enough to just leave a group of people to do your own thing, then you should have the carfare to get back home. Shit, I don’t go anywhere without having at least 5 dollars in quarters for the bus. It took a minute to convince the rest of the traveling crew, but as time lurched on and the cool air started to sweep around us, we were all on the same page. Hell this is the reason why minorities do not last that long in horror movies. Looking for the lost friend or investigating a mysterious noise is not in my day planner. No Sir… We went back to the house and cooked dinner when Lex arrived without a word about where he has been or an apology. I get the whole: I am a grown man concept, but if you are going to do grown shit, then you should at least own up to it. As he made his way around the floor, I looked at him closed my best friends bedroom door and ignored him for the rest of the night.

For me, I am not going to spend my time caring about the lives of people who have no consideration of others. So this year I’m 30, single and I am going to enjoy the summer of Kenny without restraint.

Kenny.

[Stupidity is NOT a Legal Defense] Faking Jacks

2011-06-21T07:18:00.012-04:00

I don’t get it.

Anytime I see a photo with displaying a whole lot of money, I am thinking of an IRA, rent, paid bills, a down payment for a house, car, investment property… not this fuckery here.

I really do not understand why people go out of there way and post photos of themselves with loads of money around them when they should know better. I posted a blog about this before called Flashing Jackson (back then, I think my words were a bit harsher) where I talked about this foolishness, but it keeps happening. In the age of the internet am I the only one who sees logic and common sense rapidly leaving our society? Even worse are the photos with wads of money on top of infant children. Now where are child protection services when you really need them, huh? The fact is money is dirty and can carry germs. Germs that can damage a maturing immune system. But you have these dummies that go out of their way to not only take these picture, but POST them where other idiots try and follow suit. Oh and let’s not even talk about the traces of drugs that still linger on the bills out there in circulation. Someone could’ve had that 20 up their nose sniffing coke or meth 24 hours before you touched it and here you go with it all over you. Really… There are other things that are worse than the money photos and that is of course the epidemic of sex-ting nude photos, which fucks up the lives of teens and high power adults, but that is another blog in the making.

I think as technology and all the things you can with it advances, stupidity increases as well. Let’s be real, it’s not new for someone to get in trouble for what they post online because the internet is funny place. You might think uploading that photo of yourself chopping down on a burger of $100 dollar bills is cute, but you never know WHO is looking at these photos. It could be that perspective boss you just interviewed with for that dream job. It could be law enforcement breezing through profiles and wondering why you’re unemployed (or listed yourself AS unemployed), but got all that money around you. Am I the only one watching the news stories about people being locked up for what photos and videos that they post? But most likely it is someone with ill intent seeing what you have and plotting to take it from you by any means necessary.

Seriously, people need to stop and think like a serial killer every once in awhile just for the sake of prevention. So I am looking for people to explain to why people do suck foolishness. Any takers?

Kenny.

[Lifestyles] Fatherhood

2011-06-20T17:40:00.001-04:00

So Father’s Day was yesterday. Big Deal… If you haven’t guess by now, I am not a fan of the day, but there are many reason why. Besides the fact that my own father is a fucktard, I see this day and others like it as a way for the greeting card companies to make a buck. Seriously, what is the main point of the day? One day out the year people tend to make a spectacle of themselves running out to get that must have gift for dear ole dad to show him how much you care. I figure, if you are being a good father, then you do not need a day where people tell you that. In fact, when you take the role of a parent it is your duty to make sure that the next generation is better than your own. My generation was great, but yours will be spectacular… What happen to that mindset?

I am not going to knock others for doing what they do because of the tradition, but I hope other people feel where I am coming from. As the role of Fathers has changed throughout the generations, there are men stepping up to the plate and there are men slithering out of sight to avoid any responsibility, but that is not new. I have wondered about the state of “Black Fatherhood” in this country and how it impacts the next generation. There can be several lengthily debates surrounding this. Some things I would agree with while other ideas I believe to have as much accountability as a pound of horse shit. Over the years, I’ve seen the good men work there asses off in being a good father, teaching their children to be grown adults and doing what they have to do in supporting their family and better society. On the other side of the card, I have seen and experienced for myself men who chose not to do anything for the lives they produce. What you hear the most about is the latter and I hear the complaints roaring. When I hear guys complain about paying child support or about their Baby mama drama, I cringe a bit. Child support is there to benefits the well being of a child. Even if you’re not in your child’s life you are obligated to make sure that you seed eats, has a roof over it’s head and is able to live a healthy existence until the age of maturity. Yes the cost of living is going up while the living wage in most states is either at a standstill or going down, but that is no one’s problem but your own since no one told you to splash off without protection into someone and creating your own problem. The system is there for everyone to use. For example, if you feel that the woman you have a child with is misusing the funds that you are sending or that is being subtracted from your paycheck, you can go to court and either get joint or primary custody. Of course it is not as simple as I had stated there is a lot of work that is involved, but there are measures in place that can be utilized. While it gets on my nerves when men complain about the subject, it equally gets on my nerves when women get on their soap box and preach about dead beat dads. Get it together… just like I would say so any man about their baby mama, keep in mind that YOU CHOSE TO LAY DOWN WITH THE MAN, do not get mad when you realized too late that he wasn’t worth shit.

I know there are going to be a few people out there who will assume I am a touch bitter. Perhaps, I might be. I guess as I age, I hope to see a different view of everything…

Kenny.

[My Life] Adventures in Unemployment (Pt. 1)

2011-06-03T17:32:00.000-04:00

Before the sun was up, I was fussing around my bedroom pulling out dress shirts, ties and pants, looking for something that was not too this or too that. Nothing too color loud. Nothing that was too fitted or too loose. After a few minutes of tossing this and that aside, I finally found something that I could wear to the job fair. I set up the ironing board, grabbed the spray can of water and starch and went to town on making this outfit look like I just bought it from Macy’s that morning.

By 5:30 in the morning, I was in the bathtub letting my mind wonder as I listen to the world spring to life outside my bathroom window. Usually when I take a bath, I live it up. I would have the laptop on this little bathroom seat that my mother had bought years ago for my grandmother with some kind of movie playing. I would soak in eucalyptus scented Epsom salt, white distilled vinegar, coco butter body wash and olive oil. To top my experience off, there would be a cup of tea with cookies by my side. Yeah, I pamper myself when I can now… However today, I just kept it was simple as possible. After an hour or so, I was greasing myself up with some coco butter Vaseline, then with this lemon lotion I got from Bath & Body last summer and finally some raw shea butter. Of course, in my rush to get in the tub, I forgot my towel and underwear, so I peeked out of the door to see if my mother’s bedroom door was close. As I tip toed to my bedroom naked as the day I was born but smelling 10 times better, my cat Kimmiko comes running towards me at full speed.

You see, Kimmiko has this habit of wanting to rub up on me especially after a bath or a shower, leaving all her hair and smell on me. Isn’t that lovely? Smelling like house cat is not going to impress anyone. I dashed into my room closing the door behind me, hearing her hit the door with a loud bang. I put on some jeans, a shirt and a hoodie, collapsed into my computer chair and started to over my resume for the 100^th time. After a few minutes I went into the kitchen and made my mother breakfast; some scramble eggs, blue berry pancakes and crispy turkey bacon with a side of whole wheat toast. After that I took my mother’s clothes she was going to wear and ironed them out for her. By this time she was up stirring around the house, getting herself ready.

There were a few things I needed to do before I headed out to Canarise for the job fair. The main thing was to print out my resume. This was something I would’ve done the night before, but my feet were once again swollen and it was painful to move around. Thanks Diabetes… The house PC which was connected to the printer, for some reason would not align my resume correctly, so I had no choice but to use my laptop. I brought this printer, a Lexmark all-in-one plus fax for 40 bucks on Black Friday 2008… I took it out of the box, about 2 weeks ago. I know, I know… Why the hell did it take so long for me to us it? No real answer, but the funny story with that is I had to get a USB printer cord because none came with the printer. Imagine finding that out years later.

Since this was my first time using my laptop to print anything, I had to take the time to install the software. After installing the software, an error message appeared. NO INK MUST CHANGE CARTIAGE was displayed and I really couldn’t believe that in the short time I had set up the device, my mother had used up all the ink in the printer and didn’t tell me. So at 8am, I was stuck with no resume to present to anyone at the job fair. Great… I grabbed my keys and headed out. Of course, some one left the incinerator door open and the smell was over powering. The smell was like death mixed with rotten baby puke on top of day old shit. Holding my breath, I hopped into the elevator, where someone had urinated everywhere. Clearly, my day was not going the way I wanted it to at all.

I ran up the block to the Rite Aide to see if they might carry my brand, but their shelves barely had anything on them. After grabbing a coffee and butter roll from Dounkin’ Donuts, I went by Radioshack to see if I could get the ink there. As I turned the corner, I was greeted with a closed gate and tumbleweeds. I went back upstairs and finally changed into my clothes for the event, wondering what I was going to do.The Job Fair was going to start at 10am with an expected turn out to be in the thousands. I had planned on arriving there at 9am, calm cool and collected with a nice little McDonald coffee. Unfortunately, at 9am I was dressed, ready to go, but stuck in the house waiting for Radioshack to open so I could finally get ink. By 10am, the Radioshack associate explained to me that Radioshack only carry HP ink, not Lexmark. Yeah… I had to think of a plan B and quick. I told my mother that I would meet her there, went on a mad dash through folders looking for just one hard copy. Lucky for me there was a copy of my current resume in some department of labor papers. I gathered my belongings and hustled over to the Sutter Ave. train station. Underneath the platform, there is a little drug store which makes copies for 25 cents per page.

The young lady behind the counter smile at me as I asked for 20 copies of each page (My resume is 2 pages, I have no clue if that is a good or a bad thing, but it is what it is).

“Nervous?” she asked.

“Yeah… It’s been too long and I really need to get something.”

“I wish you good luck!”

I swear she was the best. She offered to even staple each page for me, but because I was in a rush, I told her it was okay and brought paper clips. I went to the train station and as I was going up the stairs some random dude started to call out “Yo, Slim!” in my direction. Since I do not make it a habit of responding to the cat calls of men, I continued up the stairs and into the train station. None of the bloody machines were taking any bills and the token clerk was not in the booth. Shoot me now, I thought. It wasn’t even 10:30 and I wanted the day to be over already.

Finally she came from behind one of the locked doors behind the turnstile and wobbled back into the booth. Once she refilled my metrocard, I ran around the corner from the station to the B15 bus stop. The B15 is one of the most unreliable bus lines out there, never really sticking to the time listed. This was not one of those times however and a bus was speeding down Ralph Ave. As I waited those few minutes for the bus to arrive, the guy who had called at me earlier walks by me, saying that he could have gotten that card for me. Don’t care… As the bus rolled on, I grabbed one of the free double seats and planted myself by the window. A woman, who was… well, a nice way to say it is plumped, wedged herself in. While others around me were listening to music, talking on their phones loudly or just looking like they had lost their puppy, I was elbow deep in my messenger bag sorting out the pages. Even when the bus arrived my stop, the New Lotts Ave L train, I still was sorting and paper clipping everything together as I walked up to the train platform. I used travel to Canarise all the time a few years ago, in fact I knew the area where the Job Fair was being held very well. It was held at the church one block away from the nursing home my grandmother had stayed in during her final months. I walked over to the long entrance line in the parking lot of the church, took a deep breath and waiting for my turn to head inside.

Kenny.

[My Life] Sum of all things…

2011-06-02T09:02:00.000-04:00

Some people think I am: Rude, Disrespectful, Nasty, Cruel, Mean spirited, Emotionally unbalanced, Cold hearted, Weak, Violent, Depressing, A drunk, A prude, Insensitive, Vengeful, Harsh, Prideful, Conceited, Cocky, and a loser. While others think I am: Loving, Head strong, Passionate, Life of the party, Truthful, Shy, Kind, Quiet, Leader, A winner, Hard worker, Funny, Sincere, Loyal, Reliable and a good listener.

I feel I am the sum of all the things that others believe I am to be. Now you might wonder why I would believe this… Well, because at one point in time I gave them a reason to believe it to be so. While talking to a friend the other night, the topic was discussed about how I was not always the nicest person to the people around me when I was working as a supervisor. In fact I was downright nasty, rude and known throughout the office to blow up at people without a second thought. I had made people cry, nervous and a few other things, but at the time I didn’t care. I was so stressed by the amount of problems going on around me, from office politics, office romances and conspiracies that I was trying to (a) keep my job by making sure people were doing what they needed to do without me on their backs and (b) identify the people who were trying to get me to lose my job and get them let go. Let’s just say that every day was an uphill battle and the only thing that kept me going was my paycheck each week. While I might’ve been this villainous person to most people, there were a few people who I would hang out with afterhours who knew I was nothing like what the people in the office thought I was. Yeah, It’s hard to get others to overlook their first impressions of you, especially in a work environment, but when it is all said and done you can make really great and long lasting friendships.

Even though I said earlier in the blog that I feel like I am the sum of all things… I know what others think do not determine how I feel about myself. Yeah, I know I am not the nicest person in the world and can get a little extra sometimes with my anger, but I can be that friend or that shoulder to cry on when there is no one around. When I awake in the morning and look at that mirror, the only person that I need to worry about liking me… is me! I find that there are those in our society that have a hard time seeing this way. Far too many let others dictate who they are in life, instead of just BEING who they are and letting the chips fall where they may. Not everyone is going to like me… Too bad, so sad… and I damn sure don’t like most people. In my 30 years, I’ve learned that life can get so complicated with bullshit that it makes you forget that time is so short and you have to enjoy life before it is taken away.

Kenny.

[My Life] No Room for Carebears

2011-04-26T15:40:00.001-04:00

I still feel a bit numb. I really suck at being an adult most of the time…

Last year, I was knee deep in work drama bullshit, juggling my spiraling emotions and obligations while dealing with life in general. The year before that I was at Staten Island University Hospital emergency waiting room with half my face burned waiting on news on if my grandmother was dead or not. April 27^th will mark the 2 year anniversary of the accident that lead to my grandmother’s death. The fire was not the direct cause, but the infections afterwards were too much for her body to bear. It took seconds for a spark to climb up my grandmother’s sweater sleeve and spread across her upper body causing 3^rd degree burns. It took seconds for me to react in putting out the flames, calling 911 and keeping her calm until the ambulance arrive. Sadly, it took seconds for a fire to change my life forever. I watched for months as one of the women I loved most in this world, fade away from me and there was nothing I could do about it. I could not understand why I survived with just minor burns while she received the brunt of it all. I am haunted by those images, the resulting smells and my disfigurement and almost every time I close my eyes I can still see her looking back at me.

After her death, people would come up to me, telling me that she was in a better place, even though I could not phantom how being DEAD beats being sick, I would smile and nod, hoping they would just leave me alone while I suffered. I was constantly told, constantly told that I did everything right and sometimes shit happens… and I look at them with tears in my eyes like a child asking: “Why?... Why does shit just happens?” I looked to mother to make things right. To undo what was done and make everything all better, but in my selfishness, I did not realize that my mother was just a child too. She was a child who lost her mother and I didn’t know how to comfort her like she had comforted me in the past.

When death happens in a child’s world, the parents or some adult figure gives them some sort of comforting words to make the pain not disappear, but understandable. Yet, nothing is really understandable because no one knows what is next after this life, so we say things to force us into a false sense of security. Oh happy joy… What sucks about adulthood is that you know about the same amount about life as you did as a child. You just learn how to sugarcoat things to make them appear better than it actually is.

No, Johnny… there are no monsters in the closet… There in plain sight.

Kenny.

[My Life] Lie

2011-04-08T08:02:00.001-04:00

I was talking with a friend of mines the other night and I told him a story about one of the many fights I used to have with my grandmother a couple of years ago. I brought my dirty dishes into the kitchen where she was busy in front of the sink washing and watching the movie Rush Hour on DVD. “Grandma, can you wash this dish for me, I’mma be right back…” I asked her. She took the dish and I ran to the bathroom like my life depended on it. I was back in least than 3 minutes, looking for the freshly washed dish because I was going to get some more food. In the cupboard, there the dish was and when I pulled it out, it looked the same as it did when I handed it off.

“Grandma… Did you wash this dish?”

“Yes…”

“Umm… no, you didn’t. You just put it back in the cupboard”

“(My full name) I said I washed it” she yelled at me.

“No you didn’t… You just put it back with the clean dishes. That is so nasty…”

She narrowed her eyes at me and asked: “Are you calling me a Liar?” Now, that might’ve worked when I was a teenager, but as a grown man, not so much. “Yes!” I replied. “You Lied! That means you are a LIAR!” She rolled her eyes at me, grabbed her cane and shuffled out of the kitchen cursing the day I was born. My mother ran into the kitchen minutes later asking me what happen and I told her that grandma was going through one of her moments. “You two are going to drive me fucking crazy” she said, rolling her eyes which seems to be a family trait. Just for my own security of mind, I took out all the dishes and rewashed them. Overkill I know, but that is also another family trait.

I have to admit that remembering the story brought a smile to my face. Even though my grandmother has passed on, I still remember all the good AND the bad about her. For some reason people forget the bad things that a person did when they were alive and just relive only the soft and cuddly moments. She had major faults just like everyone else and had no problem showing them.

But there is a reason why I brought up this story. Why do people ask you the silliest question of “Are you calling me a liar?” when you catch them in a lie. Little white lies, tall tales, all those fabrications or just a way to avoid the truth, right? I don’t know why my grandmother lied about something as simple as a washing a dish, but the bigger questions is why did she challenge me when presented her with the truth. Was questioning me going to for some reason make her the right one? I know that I am not the only one who has experienced this before; I just find it so damn interesting.

Kenny.

[Lifestyles] Thank You for Stalking

2011-03-23T10:36:00.002-04:00

I was walking home from the Western Beef on Monday, the time of course escaped me and it was earlier than I thought it was. As I was passing the Family Dollar, I thought it was a good idea to finally pick up something that I had been looking for which was Milk of Magnesia. I wanted it for 2 reasons; I’ve been having problems with my stomach for the last few months and I heard that using Milk of Magnesia can help clear up complexion problems like blackheads.

This Family Dollar had gone through a metamorphic change last year when it went from a crappy rundown little hole in the ground to a stylish brand new crappy hole in the ground with a freezer that doesn’t smell like dead rats. I’ve shopped there many times, ever since it was one of the first stores that opened up 10 years ago when the neighborhood started going through an urban renewal that transformed the old abandoned sanitation garages underneath the 3 line train track into ugly furniture and franchise stores. When I entered the store, it was almost a ghost town, with probably 2 or 3 customers wondering around. I scanned the store to see where the healthcare or bath products were located which was in the front of the store, isolated in its own U shaped area. While I was looking through the shelves, I noticed this little African man started buzzing around. I turned my head towards him and he suddenly started to “face” (To “face” is to straighten out the products on the shelves, place them correctly under/above the tags and remove what doesn’t belong) one of the shelves. That’s odd, I thought. With spider sense tingling, I went up to him because I needed to make him useful.

“Do you have any Milk of Magnesia?” I asked.

“Um… um, no… um, we sold out of it” he replied with this deer caught in the headlights expression.

“Okay, do you have anything similar?” I asked not letting up.

“Um… I don’t think so…”

He walked me over to the same area that I just left and pointed to an empty shelf, exclaiming that there was nothing available. However just below that empty shelf were bottles of Milk of Magnesia, so I pointed to products and asked: “What is that?” His facial expression was priceless. I picked up the bottle and walked away from him without another word. As I went around the store, picking up knick knacks here and there I noticed that the he would still wonder around. By the time I finished shopping the little African man was behind the counter with another employee figuring out facebook mobile. As the other employee rang me up, the African man asked me if I found everything I was looking for. I ignored him, thanked the lady for my changed and walked out of the store.

Shopping while black is nothing new to me. When I was a teenager going to school in lower Manhattan, I would shop at some of the stores in the area and I always got the feeling that someone was watching me. At a grocery store on East 14^th street (I don’t remember the name since they long went out of business), I went to buy something to snack on and was detained by security. Of course they let me go, but I was so embarrassed that this man pulled me out of line and asked me to remove everything out of my pockets. I swore to myself that I would never go to that store again, no matter what and I kept true to my word on that.

Recently, when I went to Trader Joe’s in the city, looking to see if they might have certain herbs and spices that I can’t seem to find in the stores in my area. I went into my bag to get out my notebook that contained the shopping list when out of the blue one of the workers came up to me and asked me if I needed help. At first I thought that was really nice, I politely told him no and that I was okay and continued looking for stuff. About 2 minutes later another employee proceeded to do the same thing. I was in the middle of a crowded aisle with people gleefully snatching stuff off the shelves at a staggering pace (They have a lot of good healthy stuff there I recommend people check the place out) and this employee seemed to come directly to me and no one else. After the 3^rd time, I felt like I was being singled out. I started to notice a security guard walking around me. Now there was a very diverse clientele shopping around there, but every time I moved around there was a security guard standing to the right or left of me or an employee smiling in my face asking me if I needed something.

Was it just paranoia? Probably. Was I being stalked? Who knows. I put everything back where I found them and walked out the store.

Kenny.

[Lifestyle] The Ides of March.

2011-03-16T23:32:00.001-04:00

Have you ever heard of the saying: Beware the Ides of March?

It stems back to when Julius Caesar was assassinated on March 15, 44 B.C. on the Senate floor by his friend and many enemies. I remember hearing that saying when I was a teenager in my high school Latin class. The teacher explained that the phrase meant you have to be careful with the company you keep because not everyone has good intentions. Today, that should reign true more then ever.

At every given moment some one is betrayed by some one they know and/or love. It could be an affair, revealing personal information to a third party or some kind of action that removes the trust two people have for another. So how do you deal? In the movies, we either see a happy ending or no real ending at all. On television, there is a conflict and within the next 20 minutes there is some kind of resolution and the preview for the next week show comes on where everyone is skipping into the sunset. Rarely do we see the process that goes into repairing the consequence of a betrayal. We see the thought, the action, but never really the detail that goes into repairing the tears created. What do you do? How do you forgive? Can you move on? They’re mindless questions that have a true purpose.

In my life, I always have my guard up when dealing with people. Well… I shouldn’t say always, because there have been times that I allowed someone in. It only takes one time for me to realize that I can’t trust a person or that person is not looking out for anyone but themselves and will not mind selling out others in the drop of a hat. I only put myself out there one time and in that one time, I foolishly did not listen to that part my brain screaming DANGER! DANGER! DANGER! I thought it was going to be much different experience then it was, but in the end I was left broken emotionally. A part of my soul died, because every time I look back and see the events unfolding I want to crawl into a corner and mourn. In my 30 years, I have learned that there is really no instruction manual when it comes to life, we deal with things as they come and hope for the best. But what if the best doesn’t come and you’re left wondering why your heart is on the ground torn into pieces...

Kenny.

[My Life] B is for Failure

2011-03-15T11:25:00.002-04:00

Last week I was tired and didn’t feel like cooking dinner. I wasn’t in the mood for Chinese or Pizza and the fact that it was a gamble that if I eat either one of those, I would be hovering around the toilet for most of the night, made the choice of not getting them much easier. On my block there is a Subways restaurant. Every once in a while I would get a foot long sandwich, but this day I felt like getting a soup. There was one guy behind the counter helping a customer when I walked in. I took my place at the end of the counter and waited peacefully as the man ordered almost everything in the garnish section into his sandwich. As he was finishing up, a couple walked in talking to each other loudly, not really paying attention to the fact that other people exist. After the man paid for his order and took a seat by a group of chair in front of the store, the couple stepped up to the register and the female asked the Subway employee if they had a certain type of bread. The guy nodded, and she proceeded to ask for a sandwich completely ignoring the fact that I was stand just a few feet away. I looked at them like they were stupid and was about to say something when the Subway employee pointed in my direction and said that I was next. The woman looked at me, rolled her eyes and continued the idiotic conversation with the man she was with. Well fuck you too, heffa! I thought.

I order a chicken noodle soup and some of those hippie potato chips they have in stock. As I was leaving, I noticed the Department of Health rating posted on the door. A “B”. I hesitated for a second and wondered, why did this place get a B rating? I rarely notice those ratings before, but this time it stood out to me. My first thought was to return the soup, get my money back and just make something at home, but since I already left and have never been sick before by the food at that establishment I thought against it. When I got home, I crashed on the couch and tuned into a Blog Talk Radio program that one of my internet friends host every Wednesday and I went in on the soup. After I was done, the thoughts of the B rating were completely out of my mind… Well, that was until the next morning that is, when my stomach started acting funny. I made some peppermint and ginger tea my mother brought me a few weeks back which did the trick.

Before I started the rest of my day, I thought maybe I should look into that Subway B rating since it was from the last place I ate from. I went to the New York City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene web page and after reading about how they graded resturants, entered the restaurant name and my zip code into the search query. Not only did I see the results for the Subways restaurant on my block, I saw ALL of the results for my zip code.

From the DOHMH’s “How We Score” PDF:

“If a restaurant scores 28 or more points on its graded inspection, the Health Department will continue to inspect it roughly once a month even after it receives a grade card. The inspections will continue until the restaurant scores below 28 or is closed by the department for serious and persistent violations.”

The Subways had 17 violation points and as started to go further down the listing I saw other places I frequent had many more, one place getting 24 violation points. Let’s just say I freaked out a bit and made a mental note to pay attention those signs in the future, because when it comes to my food, a B rating is not good enough.

Kenny.

[Faith] Thanks for the Tsunami GOD, Great Job!

2011-03-15T08:02:00.003-04:00

The earthquake and resulting tsunami that destroyed parts of north eastern Japan, threaten a nuclear reactor and ended the lives of thousands is still heavy on the minds of the people in this country and around the world. At every moment we are shown the destructive path the water took, the families ripped apart and the lives of the people forever scarred. To top it off Japan’s economy is rapidly going down the toilet even as that country’s central bank tired to inject billions into the economy to no prevail. It’s a horrible scenario all around and I hope the country can return to a new normal, but with every news report detailing the damaged reactor and radiation leakage, I do not see that happening anytime soon.

In the mean time, there is this going on...

What pisses me off the most are the scum that take advantage of a tragedy to invoke the name of a GOD in glory for what has happen. During this time of reflection is when you see these people get on their soapboxes and preach that this was a good thing because their GOD allowed it to happen so that his chosen people or whatever can wake up the non-believers wherever they may be. The people from the Westboro Baptist church who protest the funerals of fallen soldiers, homosexuals and anyone that had some notoriety when they were alive with signs like “GOD HATES AMERICA” and other slogans are a prime example of what I am talking about but there are people like this woman in the video below who are also out there with less media press.

Here is a woman going by the name Tamtampamela on Youtube. After I watched the video last night, I went through a couple of her other videos where she talks about how the Aryan race would be triumphant in a race war because only Aryans are a race of free thinkers, how President Obama was the Anti-Christ trying to destroy America and the gave a list of the 10 democrats and liberal republicans who will bring his “reign of power” to the world and let’s not forget that the World of Warcraft video game was inciting Satan and his minions to go against GOD. I viewed her channel. There was a lot of girlish color (Pink and Lavender was apparently her theme). She had a little over a dozen friends, a little bit more than two dozen subscribers and thousands of comments… Yes, she had thousands of comments with more coming in at every second with people condemning her about her most recent video that I posted above. This morning when I started to write this blog, I went to her page only to find that her videos were removed and account deleted. Maybe she was a troll like many people stated. Maybe she felt threaten by the comments from enraged youtube viewers. Maybe youtube deleted her account because of the statements in the video. Whatever the reason, I don’t care, I am just glad that this media avenue for her is closed for the moment.

Personally, I want to know why people have this mindset… To think it is cool to vocalize their belief that their GOD did this destruction out of the love in his heart. Over the last few years I noticed that after any natural disaster, like the earthquake in Haiti, there was always a choir of religious nuts preaching that because they are not Christians, this was GOD’s wrath. Where is the compassion from these people? I don’t care if you are Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Atheist, etc… we are all supposed to be equipped with basic human compassion. Sometime I wonder if it is just too much for some people to bear.

Kenny.

[My Life] Keywords

2011-03-07T13:04:00.000-05:00

So apparently you can find my blog if you are looking for a sex party with trannies.

SoYeah… Go Team Venture!…

I’ve been taking my blog seriously for the last few months since I’ve been unemployed. It gives me a chance to develop some kind of income while trying to tune up my writing skills. Plus it is a way for me to return to how I was before 2009, when I would post blogs once or even more a day. Flash forward to this morning. While going through some of the stats of my blog on blogger, there is a section where you can view what keywords that people type into the search engine for your site to come up.

As you can see from the photo the phrase: “3 train sutter and rutland sex group ceo” appears. Now, imagine my surprise when those words came up on that list. I am looking at the screen thinking where the hell they do that at. I know that I never posted anything about a sex party or orgy, but I have posted a few blogs about my area and my train stop Sutter Ave./Rutland Rd., maybe just maybe that was what was being picked up. So I highlighted the words, opened a new tab in Google Chrome and proceeded to do a Google search. The very first link that popped up was the twitter account of a female by the screen name “Mssexibooty19” promoting a sex party. WOW… So, this just got very interesting. It wasn’t like I wanted the information to go, but it was weird learning of one in my area. After clicking the link, the photo of a “hood girl” came up, with a number of troll like tweets on her profile to different people about her parties and sex video tapping. I checked out her AOL Lifestream photos where this “hood girl” was pleasuring someone orally and another one where she is once again giving some one lip service while another man was behind her getting his jollies. I don’t know why people are so eager to put their very private moments on the internet for the entire world to see and something that could come back to haunt their future… but hey more power to them since it’s not me. Sadly, I know a few young girls and grown women who are trying to make their way into the porn business for different reasons and join these bottom of the barrel companies or they proceed to do things for themselves and make home video and upload them to websites like Xtube. At first I was thinking she is just trying to be the next Pinky or something like that, but from beneath the ground up. The last photo I check out was of the “hood girl” posing on what I thought was the same roof the other photos were taken on, but looking at the “hood girl” close up, I realize that she was actually a transsexual. Another surprise… I closed the tabs and went through the “O” in Google search to see where my blog came in to this travesty. After going through 15 of the “O”’s in Google I could not find anything. I scratched my head and checked out the other keywords that came up on the blogger stat tracker list and my website would come up on the first or second page.

So I am sitting here confused and wondering… How did my blog ever get connected to a listing containing this? I guess I will never know and to be honest… a part of me really doesn’t WANT to know.

Kenny.

[A More Perfect Union] Crash

2011-03-05T19:09:00.000-05:00

One of my favorite movies is CRASH. From the writing, the actors that portrayed the diverse characters and how each of those characters interact with each other in such a hostile environment to the symbolism of what each person represents. While we move around crashing into each other’s live, how many times have we take stock in what we are crashing into. The main reason I love the movie is because it is relatable when it comes to the topic of race. The reality is every person has some sort of racial prejudice inside of them. They might not want to admit it, but it’s there. Only when we acknowledge it can it be address and we as a society can move forward.

Late this summer, I linked up with a two of my friends Andre* and Jake* so we could go to this bar called the Iron Horse down by the South Street Seaport in the city. It’s a cool place with a very chilled atmosphere and mixed ethnic crowd. Now my friends were celebrating their last day at our job and I was along for the ride. We were basically getting nice and tight. Drinks were flowing, the mood was right and the bartender, a young curvy Asian woman was on the bar swing giving everyone a show while pouring drinks in some of the patrons mouths. Try to picture a coyote ugly theme… and yeah there was a school yard like swing on the bar. So it’s about midnight or so. I was maybe on my second rum and coke, while Andre and Jake were spinning the shots wheel and shooting down whatever the little peg stopped at. Even though I secretly wanted to do the shots wheel as well, I thought it would be best if I didn’t go over board since I had to be at work later that day. I have to admit, we were an odd trio. Andre is Puerto Rican, three apples high, skinny and unapologetically gay. Jake, also three apples high, African American, straight, very mild mannered and cock diesel. He is the type of guy where you might think he is not going to do nothing in a fight until all of a sudden he body slams 3 dudes at once.

Between midnight and 1am, Andre and I went out outside to smoke a cigarette and get some cool air. While I was sitting on the cement fence next to the front door, Andre was very drunk venting about all the pent-up feelings he had, when his OCD kicked in and plucked a lint ball from on top of my head. Right in front of us was this guy who laughed. By looking at him, he was short about 5’8 and you can say he was maybe in his early - mid 30’s, chubby the nerdy black rimmed glasses. He wasn’t African-American, Caucasian or Latino. My first thought was he could be Middle Eastern, but I didn’t want to jump to any real conclusion. Andre asked him what was so funny in a polite way and he mumbled an answer. An answer that I thought I heard, but no… I thought it had to be a mistake in what he said. So I asked him to repeat himself and he said the said the same thing. “You two look like Gorillas in the mist” That second time he said the remark snapped me out of my good mood. I thought of all the world horrors happening to him and him alone after I snapped his the jaw in half. I stood up, towering over him with my fist clenched. Gave him a dirty look and walked off, because knowing myself I would’ve made things worse if I had stayed. At first Andre didn’t understand what was going on, he followed me down the block asking if I was okay and I told him that I was good and just needed a moment to calm down. Before I could finish my cigarette, the man came towards me apologies asking if we were cool. I told him yeah, but he needed to get away from me. In that moment I was the bigger person… well in maturity that is. He walked off back to the front of the bar where Andre was and moments later I followed suit.

At this point, Andre and this man started to go out it. Trading barbs and insults with each statement escalating the emotions between the two. Andre face was turning red, hell his whole chest was turning red… Did I mention he was shirtless? …because that’s kind of important, but a whole other story which will remain untold on this blog. The man showed that didn’t understand what he said was wrong and instead of thinking before he spoke to us or accepting the fact that what he said was entirely wrong, he wanted to try and prove a point and be a complete ASS! As the man started to defend his comment to us, I really, really wanted to hit the dude, however my main focus was making sure no one (especially my friends) got into trouble, starting a fight or ending up doing something extremely stupid and be thrown in jail, so I grab Andre and dragged him inside.

While the night continued, things cooled down. Andre was for all intensive purposes GONE in drunken joy, Jake was enjoying the view of the female bartenders and I was trying to let the earlier event go, but I could feel the man’s eyes on me every now and then. At the bar, I ordered my 4^th rum and coke and I looked around for Andre, wondering where this little Puerto Rican went. You know when you get that nagging feeling in the pit of your stomach? I started to get that feeling and headed to the front of the bar where I could see the man and Andre once again getting into a heated argument. I rushed outside and stood in between them. If this dude took a swing I wanted to make sure that I protected Andre since he was smaller than the guy and weighed less, but I didn’t know then like I know now that he could take care of it himself. I tried to maneuver him away, which was difficult because his drunken state made him quite squirrely.

Less than 10 minutes after getting back into the bar for the second time, I was sitting with Jake at a table next to the jukebox telling him what happen outside while Andre was dancing/grinding on some woman at the end of the bar (A whole other story as well), when suddenly the man came up to us extending his hand trying to be friends. Jake gave me this look. “Is that the dude?” He asked. I nodded. The man looked at Jake and kind of froze up. Remember, when I said Jake was diesel? Yeah… I don’t think the man realize how big Jake was until he approached us.

This had become the last straw to me and I really didn’t care at this point about hurting feelings. I told him to: Just fucking leave me alone before I get really upset. He held his hands up as if to give up and walked away. Thankfully that was the last time I had seen him. After that night I became good friends with Andre and Jake and even though we are all leading separate happy lives, we meet up now and then and enjoy the time. While last year taught me a few lessons, the most important one being that even someone I might have the MOST in common with (from career goals to social surroundings) can try and will, stab you in the back or try to sabotage everything you are trying to do, I learned that we are all crashing into each other for a reason. Sometimes that reason is unclear to us at first… Many times people and I am including myself, do not recognize how important the every event is to us, since it defines who we are and what we stand for. Now, I don’t believe the man was a racist all, but maybe his lightly intoxicated state allowed certain thoughts to project from his inner being. I was glad that I used better judgment in dealing with the situation and it taught me that when confronted, even with a clouded mind, I can avoid the urge to strike and go down to there level.

*The names were changed to protect their own individual identity

Kenny.

[Lifestyles] They live among us

2011-02-24T13:39:00.000-05:00

A couple of years ago, after I retrieved the mail from the mailboxes from the lobby of my apartment building, I waited by the elevator which seemed to take forever to come. As I waited there, my neighbors, a mother and daughter, who I rode down with were chatting about something that I wasn’t paying any attention too. When the elevator door finally opened I held the door for them. They said “thank you” and smiled. The truth of the matter is I didn’t like this pair at all. They’re both glorified baby sitters, making their general incomes by watching children from around the neighborhood, which I have no idea why anyone would leave there child with them. The daughter has 3 children of her own with the youngest by this crip gang member I used to be friends as a child. Now, we barely speak except for greetings, but I could care less for that. Every now and then, I would watch as the dysfunctions of their family would play out for the whole building to see. The mother screaming at her grandchildren, throwing them out of the house and locking them out for hours in their underwear so they would have to sit on the cold stairs and use the incinerator as a bathroom, hitting them with belt or whatever she could get her hands on. The daughter, the children’s mother, was no better as she was always in the hallway with her “boyfriend” the crip, smoking blunts (which I caught her kids doing as well) or getting into fights with her daughter that were sometimes physical. When I called the cops on them once after seeing the mother hit her grandson with a 2 by 4, my grandmother scolded me harshly about minding my own business. She didn’t want any problems especially from “those people” as she so loving put it. So just like everyone else in the building, I pretended to not see what was going on.

As the second door to the elevator was about to close, it suddenly stops and retreats back as the first door opened and a man, who only moved into the building a short while before, steps in. He greets everyone with a hello along with a smile and pressed his floor number. The condense space was suddenly became extremely quiet. No one seems to move or even breathe as we rumbling passed each floor. When we reached his floor, which was before ours, he turned to us and said “Have a good day”. After the man exited the elevator, the mother turned to her daughter and asked: “Who dat?” in a heavy island accent. “I don’t know” the daughter replied. “All that’s left in this building are strangers… Strangers and faggots” They both started laughing over there stupidity, with the daughter looking in my direction to join them. I said nothing, waited for the door to open and left them. As I was unlocking my door, I could still hear them laughing and I thought to myself that it was strange how they would condemn others or make fun of people with a family they have.

However, they were right about one thing. The apartment building had become a place full of strangers. After the new landlord took over my building, a lot of things changed. People who had lived there for decades like my family were moving out, the rents were being raised to dramatic amounts and different kinds of people were moving in. I underlined and bolded the word “kinds” for a reason. Since the previous years I had worked in real estate, I could spot people who were a part of a certain program to get their apartments. Either you were receiving section 8, part of homeless shelter program or a member of a HIV/AIDS housing program. Since rent payments come straight from agencies, many landlords would take applicants because those were guaranteed payments. Suddenly there were crack heads and overtly gay men running around the building, much to the dismay of some of the residents. When my mother and I, had to clear up a mistake on their part concerning the rent (They said we were missing payments, but we had the receipts that proved that the money order was not only given to them, but cashed as well), one of the men in the office told us they were going to the building so much better. So what happen next? They fired the superintendent who ran the building like a tight ship. He would not allow people to smoke in the hallways, made sure that repairs were taken care of and confronted people who he knew did not live in the building. He was like this evil Puerto Rican watchdog that never let up. Within a year after he was dismissed, a disable elderly man was robbed, shot and killed in his apartment. Gang graffiti started to be placed on the walls though out the floors followed by all night parties in the hallways. The mailboxes in the lobby were broken into several times especially around the first of the month. A veteran was jumped and robbed, then had his apartment broken into several times. The “new” super, wasn’t new but actually managed the building the next door, another property acquired by the landlord, refuse to deal with the problems going on in my building. Heat was a rare during the winter months with complaints falling on deaf ears. The last time my grandmother had left the house by herself, a man she didn’t know tried to touch her. I don’t know what would’ve happen if it was for a neighbor who knew her and helped her in the building. When I asked her who this guy was she refused to tell me, but never went outside without my mother or me next to her. A drug dealer moved in next door which brought police pounding on our door by mistake one Sunday morning. Finally in 2008, someone shot and dumped a man’s body behind my building. The news story about his death contained only 88 words and gave incorrect info, but that was it. Nothing was ever resolved. As this urban renewal around my block started bring in new stores like Raidoshack, Dollar Deals, Family Dollar, Pay Half, etc. the people in this neighborhood are not embracing the changes but wallowing in self misery.

Awhile back I wrote a blog called {Welcome to the Neighborhood... NOW GET OUT!}, I talked about the drug dealers that moved next door to me and the sexual predators around the neighborhood, but I have another little story to share about this guy… since I do not remember his name; I am going to call him Frank. Frank moved into the building shortly after the new landlords took over, with his pregnant daughter and son-in-law. There were quiet, kept to themselves and made movements only at night. When I was around them, I always got this feeling that something was not quite right with them. I thought his daughter had the deadest eyes, like she was walking around but no one was home. I would see Frank every now and then over the years, but shared no words with him. Last year, when I would come home at crazy hours of the night from work, I would stop at the “L” (The shopping district around the elevated train station) to get dinner before I headed home to crash. Walking home, I would see Frank panhandling in front of the McDonalds. The first time I saw that, I didn’t pay it any attention, but after seeing it a dozen or so times where he even asked ME for change, I knew something was fishy. I would wonder how can he afford to live in the apartment building if he is out here panhandling when new apartments go for a thousand dollars a month.

Towards the end of last year around late summer/early fall, I was walking into my building, tired from work. Like second nature, I went to check the mailbox the moment I went pass the foyer and there was Frank standing there in the lobby with 2 other men I had never seen before. One guy was tall and lanky with a beer bottle in one hand and a lit cigarette in the other. The other guy was short wearing basketball shorts, a wife beater and had a number of tattoos, one being a Puerto Rican flag on his neck. The 3 men stood around, nervously pacing when another guy came into the lobby. Frank took him to the side and the two other men just stood there talking to one another. I had my headphones on blaring music and wasn’t paying attention to what was going on. As I waited for the elevator, another tenant approached and as I opened the elevator door for everyone, when Frank and the short guy refused to go in. The tall guy looked at them and shook his head in disgust. In the elevator, the tall guy went off about Frank. “Fucking crackheads” he started. “Talking shit, how they trying to be dealers when they smoke up everything.”

DING! DING! DING!

The red flags were going off like crazy. Frank was crackhead. Even though I didn’t care about it, everything started to make sense. As the taller guy started to really go in about Frank and his life, I kept thinking to myself that this was more information that I wanted to know. Everything done in the dark comes to light. Behind every door in this apartment building holds secrets that no one want other to know. Over the last two months, 5 people moved from the apartments on my floor. The landlord sent crews to pretty them up, but I have a feeling that they is just going to move more and more people like Frank into the building. Shuffling more and more of the destructive bottom 10 percent of our society from place to place who brings nothing good to the lives of others.

Oh and by the way, I don’t know if it matters or not, but Frank is white.

Kenny.

[My Life] Happy

2011-02-15T07:20:00.008-05:00

I am happy. I get to hang out with one of my brothers this week and I haven’t seen him in almost 5 years. Plus I get to meet for the first time, my sister-in-law, my niece and my 2 nephews. It is an amazing feeling leaving me on cloud 9. This year, I turned 30, get to hang out with brother, started the process of changing my last name and later this year Vegas. Hopefully, I will have a good job by that time making the same amount of money or even more than I did before I was laid off, BUT I am not holding my breath on that since there are so many people in my situation. While both of my older brother’s live aboard we all have stayed in contact through phone calls and e-mails, but it feels great to actually see one of them in person again. My mind is scrambling on things for us to do, but because of the season and the nippy weather, things are limited to indoor activities. The last time, both my brothers came to visit and we hung out at the Statue of Liberty (a week after my birthday on a cold January afternoon), a place they never been to and a place I haven’t seen since I was a child with my mother. Funny how you take for granted the things around you when it is just at your finger tips. During the next couple of days, we hung out at our Aunt’s house, joking, laughing, played dominoes as if we always knew each other. Notably, my mother was nervous about the union and I don’t blame her for that. I was nervous about it too especially since I received such a horrible reception from my father just a few years before and there was some ugliness that happen when they were here, but that was my father’s fault, NOT ours.

As I wrote before in Sins of the Father, my father did a lot of horrible things to the people around him. I am not going to go into what he has done, but I will say that one of those things he did was not allowing his children to know each other, hence why I only met my brother’s for the first time right after my 25^th birthday. At first, I didn’t see what we had in common and I often wondered if we were not brothers would we be friends. Hell, would they even want me around? I used to tell them that no matter how long we got to know each other, I would always feel like a stranger because not only were they blood brothers, they grew up together and had shared much more. A part of me wanted to sabotage the relationship before it went anywhere. I thought I did not deserve something like this. Growing up a single child and then all of a sudden having 2 older brothers who actually wanted to get to know me was something I could not comprehend. But they were constantly encouraging, loving and at every moment embracing of me. Especially when I was going through the turmoil concerning my grandmother, they were there for me and supportive. Even if they couldn’t be here in the flesh with me, I knew that they were just a phone call away, willing to talk me down from some mental ledge.

For some time, I shielded myself away from most of father side of the family out of fear. I didn’t want to be hurt or disappointed by them again. I didn’t want to get to close and then thrown to the side. Not to mention the fact that I am the spitting image of my father and it is hard for some family members to look past it. I spent so much time trying to find these people and then… I vanished. It was a coward’s way out. I thought they would be better off not knowing I existed while at the same time hiding the fact that I was just scared they would turn out like my father. Well scared that I might be like him more like it.

Lucky for me, I have my brothers around to help guide me through some of the rough patches. I am really happy. Today is going to be a good day.

Kenny.

[Lifestyles] Happy Venereal Disease Day!

2011-02-14T20:20:00.000-05:00

So today is another Valentine’s Day and I wanted take a moment to give a Valentine Day shout out to all the men out there who are spending the day, masturbating to busty Asian blonds, while others break their backs to impress the one they love. Yeah, as you can guess, I am not a fan of the day. Even when I was in a committed relationship, I made it known not to expect anything from me on this day because I always thought it was stupid to deplete my bank account and destroy my patience just for a pretty smile and 15 minutes of guaranteed sex. Doing special things for the one you love should come every day, sometimes even twice a day, but not on some manmade holiday that is just a gimmick for the greeting card monopoly.

I am going to leave those out there with some damaged pearls of wisdom. If you are going to indulge in your dollies tonight, remember VD also stands for Venereal Disease and it doesn’t take a holiday. Load up on the condoms, KY gel (Eros or Astroglide are much better) and tear the town or your friend for the night… apart. It is not going to be very special when you wake up with the hero ability to pee fire tomorrow morning. As for me, I am going to be relaxing in a nice hot bath watching the 3^rd season of True Blood on my laptop while drinking a glass of Merlot and eating some chicken fingers.

Kenny.

[A Negro in Black America] AIDS in Black America (Pt. 1): The Awareness Gap

2011-02-11T13:30:00.000-05:00

Did you know that February 7^th was Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day? Funny. For some reason, I didn’t know about this day or had forgotten about it. Plus, I doubt that there are many in the African-American community that knows about this day either unless they are infected with the virus of course. It’s not heavily promoted like World AIDS Day, which is on December 1^st, but it is one day that many people should take a moment to reflect on. Since we are no longer in the era where hospitals are filled with the skeletonized figures begging for death, the threat of this diseases is so minimized… almost as if it is on the same playing field as other chronic ailments like diabetes. Medications and images of people like Magic Johnson, who has been living with the virus for many years in the public eye, have giving to the illusion that everything will be okay with just a few pills a day. But let’s be real… New treatment doesn’t mean a solution since there is no money in a cure. Treatment is the ultimate cash cow now isn’t it? But I digress…

Over the last 10 plus years, HIV/AIDS in the Black community has sky rocketed, especially among Black woman, but that doesn’t seem to be headline news. A couple of years ago, I wrote a blog (for those that followed me for a minute, it was during the Yahoo! 360 days, where social networking blogging was as simple as 1-2-3) concerning an ABC Primetime special which focused on the AIDS pandemic in the Black community. Thanks to Youtube (I posted the playlist onto my tumblr page (itsjustkenny!) for all those that would like to view the program for themselves), I watched the program once again and felt the same way I did back in 2006 when it first premiered. I remember sitting at my aunt’s house in New Jersey with a pen and a pad, taking down pages of notes of what I wanted to express, just to have people barely notice the blog until 2 years later when I reposted it to another social networking site.. The program itself wasn’t ground breaking or revealed anything that wasn’t already known. All it did was highlight five points on how the virus had effect the Black community.

The reasons were:

1. The government’s ignorance and/or indifference on the toll this disease has done to the Black and Brown communities and the impact of celebrities who raise money for other countries HIV/AIDS relief programs instead places closer to home,

2. The failure of the government to enact programs that have been proven to decrease the spread of the disease.

3. The sexual habits of Black men and women.

4. The “Down Low”, where men engage in homosexual acts but proclaim heterosexuality.

5. The failure of Black leaders especially those in the highly held Black church, to take a stand concerning HIV/AIDS.

In this Blog I am going to discuss the first 2 of the 5 points. Since the cultural war of the 80’s, when the HIV/AIDS pandemic began, it was seen as only a White Gay Male disease. Many conservatives in congress during that time did not want government funds going to people who in their view were suffering from the effects of their anti-Christian lifestyle choice. In fact many did not want to even acknowledge the problem existed at all. There was a clear failure to see this as it was by President Reagan’s administration at least in the public eye. Silence created more damaged, because it allowed people to become influenced by ignorance, prejudice and misinformation which polarized the topic from progressing even further. While the stigma surrounding the HIV/AIDS may have changed throughout the years, in the Black community it remained the same. It was something that you did not discuss unless you had to and if there was some one that you knew with it then you had to not be around them out of fear. It was just a GAY WHITE DISEASE and the other ways that the virus was spread, like IV drug use, was not as focused on until it was too late.

When the war on drugs took hold in the African American community, pretty much moving a segment of the population from the street and into prisons, many were infected with the virus but did not know it. While I will go into the how prisons have helped in the stigma and spread of the disease at a later date, I will say this… Men who may have contracted the disease through IV drug use are put into an environment where condoms are prohibited but rape and relationships are known to happen, the once release will continue to partake in heterosexual relationships. This allows the virus and other disease to get quickly passed around. Both Bush administrations opposed providing money for programs like needle exchange, which provided clean needles to IV drug users (something that has been successful in other countries) instead of sharing needles with one another because they believed that programs like this would encourage drug use. As we all know, without the funding it could not get off the ground. The Clinton Administration took no action. While many thought he would support such a plan, he had no political capital to spend because of the scandal with Monica Lewinsky. Once again, the idea of funding something that could provide some kind of small solution was put on the backburner. The current Obama Administration has not taken a stand on this matter as well. Maybe because there are a whole host of problems going on with the world today, but with new medical technologies like stem cell research hope is on the horizon.

What the question that should be asked now is whether or not the government will follow suit and see provide the funding for something that is crippling the Black community. In a 2004 vice presidential debate between Dick Cheney and John Edwards, Gwen Ifill, asked both men about the government’s role in decreasing the newly infection rates among Black women. While Dick Cheney proclaimed ignorance about the infection rate and provided no real answer but vowed to “look into it” during his next administration, his democrat opponent John Edward did not do any better by talking about what’s going on with the AIDS effort in Africa and China. How that relates to African-Americans in the United States, I have no idea. Flash forward 4 years, during the 2008 presidential elections, in one of the Democrat debates which was moderated by Travis Smiley, every candidate gave impassionate statements about what they plan to do about AIDS in Black America if they were elected. The Republican candidates were never publicly asked or at least I cannot find a video at this moment of any of them talking about it. Besides the reauthorization in 2009 of the Ryan White Care Act by President Obama, there has been nothing really said on the matter concerning HIV/AIDS here in the states.

Aboard is a very different and complicated matter.

I used to hate seeing African-American urban and not so urban celebrities (i.e. Beyonce, P. Diddy, The Oprah, etc…) trot off to Africa to do a concert, hold a few press conferences about what they are doing in the AIDS relief front and be shown walking through a neighborhood with kids running around them. I thought it was asinine. I could not understand why it was so hard for them to do something here as well as Africa. What about a PSA or a foundation to benefit those living with the virus? What about a campaign that talks open and honestly about condoms usage or sexual relationships. Hold town hall meetings about how men and women should be honest about their sexual behavior and get tested together. Talk about how HIV/AIDS is the leading cause of death among Black women from the ages of 25-30. Hell, go on high schools, college campuses, rallies and parades and while popping bottles and just say protect yourself.

But the reality is… Things were really F-ed up there in Africa and it continues to be with sparks of success stories here and there. Like how the crack era took a whole generation of parents and children away from their families. The virus and a whole host of disease have done so over there. Generic drugs, proper medical facilities and qualified physicians, all the things that we take for granted here in the states, are sparse. More awareness is needed and the one (and ONLY) thing I used to praise former President Bush about was his handling of the AIDS crisis in Africa, by increasing the funding with The President's Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief (PEPFAR/Emergency Plan) which was a commitment of billions over five years. HOWEVER that is a double edge sword. If you look some African countries like Uganda, ultra conservatives American groups like “The Family” have successfully encourage AIDS stricken countries to drop the platform of condom usage, which was working to promote an “abstinent only” policy dealing with the threat of the disease and as a provision that 20 percent of the funding from PEPFAR must go to abstinent only programs. Powerful Evangelicals pastors have used their influence to encouraged government officials to be move to more of a faith base government. Our tax dollars are pushing this agenda, but it seems like no one is either admitting it or what us to know about it and current programs here in the states that those with the virus rely on are either underutilized, underfunded or unappreciated.

In the continuing global fight against HIV/AIDS, the world is forgetting about what is going on on the home front. HIV/AIDS is still infecting our communities and killing a new generation without the same outcry that came from the 80’s. With a disease continually on the rise, what can we do as a community to get our government’s attention…

Speak out!

Kenny.

[My Life] Morning Blaze.

2011-02-11T10:32:00.000-05:00

The sound of helicopters was the first clue that something was wrong. It took me awhile to finally get some sleep and once I began to drift, the roaring sounds of helicopter broke the silence of the room. At first I ignored it, thinking it was just the police doing some kind of search or sweep or SOMETHING and it should just go away in a few minutes. After 5 more minutes when the noise didn’t go away, but get more intense as if it was right overhead, I walked over to my bedroom window which looks Kings Highway. As the sky was preparing for the new morning, it painted a rose canvas for the helicopters to glided over gray streams of smoke. Shit, I muttered. What the hell is going on now? The sounds of emergency vehicles came next, followed by the image of number of police cars and ambulances moving recklessly through traffic. Looking over my cluttered desk for my cigarettes, I came to the realization that had none left. Cursing as I grabbed some jeans from off the floor, I was hoping that the deli where I got my cigarettes from at a discount (10 dollars a pack while others in the area charge around 12 dollars) was open even through it wasn’t 6 a.m. yet. Even as I sleepily moved around my bedroom for clothes, more and more sirens can be heard outside. Kimmiko, my cat made her way into my room

Within the span of 10 minutes from first hearing the helicopters, I was out the door. The moment the hit the street, the blistering cold gripped me. I zipped up my jacket even further in hopes that it would provide more warmth. As I turned onto my block from my building entrance way a oceans of red and white light stood before me just on the other side of Kings Highway. Cop cars and emergency vehicles blocked off the area from the growing traffic. Curiosity was getting the best of me. I wanted to know what was going on.

Since the Deli was on my block, I went there first. Surprisingly there were several people in line already playing lottery numbers. First this woman, dressed in some sweats, thin jacket and hair wrap called off her numbers, that I nonchalantly mentally saved in my own mind for later, then this Crip, I knew growing up shouted his numbers to the Arabian behind the counter joking with him at the same time “An OG told me I should write my numbers down instead of saying them, nahmean…” he told him. The guy just nodded and gave a polite laugh. I paid no attention to the dialogue, wanting to get the hell out of there before he asked me for change again. As the Crip was getting himself together, going through the shelves for some goodies, the Arabian guy came over to me and I asked for the cigarettes and a large cup of coffee. “Light and sweet, 8 sugars” I told him. He gave double take, as if he has never heard me order coffee like this before even though I am there almost every other morning. “Are you sure?” he asked in a heavy accent. I just nodded. He turned to the coffee maker saying something in Arabic then turned back and handed me my cup. I thanked him and exited the store.

While the sky was bright and sunny, the area before was draped in fog. As I approached the scene, the smell caught me off guard. I am not a fan of fires, especially since my grandmother’s accident. Seeing someone you love ablaze, burns itself in your memories for a lifetime. Shortly after my grandmother’s accident, there was an explosion in the building across the street from my house. The smell of the explosion lingered for days and as I got closer the smell triggered old memories that really wanted me to turn back, but only a few feet away, I ignored those feelings those feeling and continued on.

There must’ve been over 100 Firefighters and at least 25 fire trucks in the front of the NYCHA apartment building. Ladders were still extended to the roof and smoke was making its way from the top floors. At a safe distance across the street, I watched as EMT workers looked after some fire fighters in an ambulance and others that had collapsed on the pavement. As I started to take some snap shots of the area with my camera phone, this guy starting talking the head off of anyone around telling them what happen and how he got photos of it all. Children in groups or with their parent started to make their way to the JHS and elementary school up the block, passing the depressing scene. Some stopped and watched, while other hurried along. A man with son stop next to me, and asked what happen. I told him there was a fire and he began to laugh. “Housing is going to finally get in trouble over those damn boilers” he said as he held his son hand “Finally going to find to put that shit in the building”. That is when I finally remembered this place. For the last 4 or 5 years, the boilers have been outside these building managed by the NYCHA and they received a lot of negative press about it (LINK) last year. When I used to make my daily walks to Canarsie to see my grandmother in the nursing home, I would pass by these monsters hoping that nothing would spill out on me.

Suddenly, my hand began to swell and my fingers started to turn a pinkish purple. That’s when I knew it was time to head back home to warm up. I stopped at the deli once more and got a second cup. The Arabian was sweet talking to a girl who had dressed similar to the woman I had seen when I came in the first time. She was giggling while holding on to a loosie he handed her as I walked in.

“You’re back so soon” He said.

“Yeah…” I answered slightly laughing. “I went to see what was going on down the street”

“Oh yeah the fire… Is it out?”

“Yeah… but it’s a big scene”

“Where is it?” The girl asked.

“Over by the NYCHA buildings a block up” I told her gesturing as if the builds were right in front of us.

“Oh you mean, by the Castle?” she asked, with a horrid expression.

Now the “Castle” was part apartment complex, part halfway shelter, part drug den and exactly across the highway from the deli. Both the Arabian guy and I gave her side eye glance.

“Not the building across the street, the one with the boilers outside.”

“OOOHHHH!!!” she said.

So I made my way back home, dodging the kids that were getting off their school bus and running into the Charter school on my block and other adults that were making their way to where they had to be today. As I turned the key into the lock of my apartment door, I thought that this was an interesting way to start the day.

Kenny.

[My Life] 30-Something

2011-01-31T07:30:00.027-05:00

So last Monday, I officially hit a milestone, by turning the ripe age of 30 and I couldn’t be happier. I know it’s rare for someone to say that out right about getting older, but after the last couple of years of sorrow and misfortune, I really needed something to celebrate. As I begin the 3^rd decade of my life (Well next year when I turn 31, that officially starts off the next decade, but hey humor me for a second), I find myself reflecting on the lessons I’ve learned thus far. Last year alone, I learned that there are people who I might have absolutely nothing in common with, can be the best of friends, while the people I might have the most in common with can become the fiercest of enemies. Imagine the movies “Mean Girls”, “Boyz in the ‘Hood”, “Cruel Intentions” and “The Player’s Club” had a bastard child and THAT would be my 2010. Yeah…

Right now, I look at the world around me in amazement. I’ve lived through 2 wars (ironically the conflict has been with the same country), several national tragedies with the most heartbreaking being 9/11, the election of this country’s first President of color (I honestly do not believe President Obama was the first, but it’s not like he can deny it or “pass” like other presidents were able too but that is neither here or there) and the Age of technology which has transformed every aspect of America. I know that this is just the beginning and over the years I hope to experience much more.

Moving forward, I know I have to let certain painful imagery, actions and events stay in my past. I can not move on if I am still wondering why this happened or what could I have done to change this event when in the grand scheme of things, it’s is done and over with. I wasn’t prom king, wasn’t a guest on the “The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien” or in a porn movie with Paris Hilton and my life still turned out okay. As my future is not yet determine. I have to be more determine to go down that road to get to a level that I want to get to which I know will be hard and rewarding in the end.

When I was younger I thought by this age, I would have a whole lot of things accomplished, but reality and idealism often clashed with one another. I have these goals like that I started to focus more on like:

· Being more active in saving funds.
· Working out 3 times a week.
· Yearly check for any form of cancer (since it runs on my father side of my bloodline)
· Going back to school for a higher education and working towards my BSW.
· Opening an IRA.
· Investing in a stock portfolio.
· Making sure that one other person, either my best friend or one of my brothers, has a medical proxy for me just in case my mother is unable for any reason to any make medical decisions on my behalf.

As time goes on, there will be more goals for me to develop and mature, but I learned that in order for me to succeed, not only do I have to plan well, but I have to make sure that each decision I make will be in my best interests.

Here’s to another year and another milestone with more to come!

Kenny.

[Lifestyles] Sickness at the Gate

2011-01-17T19:05:00.000-05:00

Last year was crazy, painful and rewarding for me and when I was laid off in September, I thought I would take the time to evaluate my life while I was able to get unemployment. However most of that time, all the stress I had built up by over working myself those last few months had caught up with me and I spent most of October sick as a dog in bed. It was so bad that I had to go to the Emergency Room twice, because I could not take the pain. While waiting at Kings County Hospital, my main concern was not only the pain, but how I was going to pay for the visits. At the time, I was trying to get my unemployment cleared and I was no longer receiving any new checks from my previous employment so I only had a certain amount in my bank accounts to pay for things like rent, food and other bills. An ER visit was not in the budget to say the least.

In 2009, when I was in and out the hospital dealing with results of my grandmother accident, I would watch on the news about these town hall meetings where people would come out about health care reform, dubbing it “OBAMACARE” and how it was this total government takeover of our lives. You saw one political party pull out all the stops, and succeed might I add, to cause havoc concerning what healthcare reform could really mean to the populace. Even with the topic of “Death Panels” and “Pulling the plug on Grandma”, my mother and I had to make real decisions on the life of someone we loved dearly and did not want to see in pain, had to watch these people make a mockery of what we and millions of people were going through at that moment. I was disappointed with the Democrats constantly trying to appease the Republicans at every turn to only gain no votes and the disappearance of the public option further enhance my grievance. When I hear Republicans and Tea Party backed politicians say they speak for the “will” of the people, who are they speaking about, really? Not me I know that for sure. But atlas, by gones are by gones and crying over spilled milk doesn’t save the world. Just like the rest of the country, I had to move on. In the last two months I’ve had several doors shut in my face because my current income has me at a level where I am too poor to afford For-Profit health insurance like HIP, with the co-payments and premiums, BUT too rich to receive Medicaid. You see, when I started my old job last year, I just started to receive Medicaid and after my first check, it was discontinued because I made way more than allotted, which was fine, but kind of put me out there with no insurance. Of course I didn’t think about it while I was working. I was trying to get myself out of debt and make sure that my mother and I had a roof over our heads, food in our bellies and light to switch on when either one of us enter a room… and that I did.

So currently, I go to a hospital clinic on a sliding scale. The co-payments are within my budget restraints for the moment, but there are some good and bad points to it. The good part is I get to see a doctor, however whenever I am there, it reminds me of the days where I had to take my grandmother to the clinic and spend hours upon hours waiting to be seen for 5 minutes and given another appointment to do it all again the next month. The waiting room would always be filled with people who were either elderly, mentally or physically disabled people with their handlers and children running amuck. There were times I had to put a few people in check because they had gotten way to close to my grandmother while making a scene… and when you add the mixture of impatience, frustration and mentally disturbed people in a closed environment, only brings forth the ugliest in some people. Now, when I sit in the clinic alone, avoiding eye contact with the crazy ass people crowding the area, I wonder how many other people are in my situation. Waiting for a doctor, well let’s keep it real, an intern who can’t say your name right even if it was tattooed on your forehead, see you for a few minutes to inform you that your test results are not back yet and they still don’t know what is wrong. Hell, how many people are out there who cannot even afford a sliding scale and have no way of acquiring any kind of coverage. But that is another story altogether…

A few days ago I ran across this video on Youtube of a People Court case where a woman was suing a eye glass place in Canarsie, Brooklyn. Here’s the case:

I was SOOO mad after watching this video, because while I have been struggling debating on whether or not I can afford to go to the doctor, this woman was buying name brand non-prescription sunglasses like D&G, while receiving Medicaid and because I make 100 dollars over the cap with unemployment, I get nasty looks like I am trying to rob the system! I would like to hear more people talk about Medicaid reform instead of the total useless repeal efforts of legislation. What’s done is done. When the opportunity to enhance reform came about, there was nothing but bitterness, lies and miscommunication being tossed around.

On the news when I see reports of people cheating Medicaid of thousands, sometimes millions, but I hear either nothing or very little about what procedures are going to implemented to ensure that it would not happen again. Maybe, just maybe we should ask our congress representatives to look at what is on the table now and put forth improvements and correct any loop holes that may occur. There comes a point where people need to come together and really iron out there difference to really enhance the lives of the people of this country. With unemployment still high, political tension boiling over and a struggling economy still on the rebound… there comes to a point where we have to say enough is enough let’s get it together…

Kenny.

[The Stupidity Defense] Sag Low

2010-12-07T15:46:00.002-05:00

A few years ago, I wrote a couple of blogs about dealing with the stupidity of people in everyday life. In one of those blogs, I talked about when I was taking medical assisting courses and there was this woman who constantly boosted about being an RN in her native Africa but DID NOT know how to correctly use a blood pressure cuff, read a medical chart or had basic computer knowledge. I mean this woman did not know how to how to BOLD font characters in Microsoft word and this was AFTER 8 weeks of a elementary computer course. Every time she saw me, she wanted me to help her in doing this or that, while at the same time trying to get me to do her entire assignment for her. It was only after cursing her out in front of the entire class and calling her everything but a child of God did she get the message that I did not like her and was no longer going to help her. In another blog, I wrote about working with folk in retail during the holiday season and people lose their f-ing minds and act like it’s not them it’s you. I have witnessed and been involved in the craziest scenarios when I worked in some retail stores because people are either too stupid to listen or just too hard headed to understand. One of my biggest pet peeves was dealing with cell phones because many people don’t understand the correlation between a cell phone maker and cell phone service. If you come into a store asking for minutes for a Nokia phone, you will get the “You’re a Duh-Duh” expression from the associate helping since Nokia only makes cell phones and does not provide you with service. You can’t image how many arguments I got into because they thought they knew better then the facts in front of them. I guess that is probably the reason why some many people do stupid things.

On to the topic at hand, A Facebook buddy of mines posted this video that I wanted to share:

Now I have blogged about the whole sagging epidemic that has taken over the urban communities for some time now. Point blank, it’s one of the stupidest urban fashion trends out there and if a lot of these hood dudes truly understood what the sagging represents they would not be in a hurry to show the draws. However after watching this clip, I was left scratching my head as to why this man, Mario Johnson was arrested AND what he was arrested for (Indecent exposure) because nowhere in the report did anyone say he exposed his privates. JUST THE UNDERWEAR!!! And that several women costumers complained to security about this man’s idiotic fashion sense which started all of this. Now look, my first thought was: “Miss, why are you crotch watching that hard for?” Because picture it… It’s 5:30am on Black Friday and you’re looking for a deal. Are you really paying attention to what the people around you are wearing and at the same time did you ever felt compelled to get security involved? This is why I have to assume that it was either one security guard that was offended and wanted to execute (in Eric Cartman’s voice) Authoritah! The next time I see a woman in camel toe jeans, should I go to the police and have her hauled off to jail? Now he was an idiot for getting loud, but I don’t blame him. If I am standing in line minding my own business and security pulls me out of line to tell me to pull up my pants, I would lose it too, but he just went about it the wrong way. You’re not going to win when police can say you were “Out of control and in a fighting stance” in order to slap a criminal case on you.

So I have to chop this up to all around stupidity on everyone’s part. Even through stupidity is not a legal defense by no means, he is going to need a good lawyer to get this case knocked out, but let’s keep it real, who are the true morons in this case?

Kenny.

[My Life] Fight Club Kenny

2010-12-06T12:19:00.002-05:00

If you ask any of my friends, I am the first one to try to end a conflict then be the one to start one, so a funny thing happened to me a couple of weekends ago. I got into a fight. Yeah… I’ve had arguments with tons of people over the last few months, but it’s been years since I had a good old fashion tussle. It started off as a goodnight for the most part. I recognized a few faces, talked to some new people, reconnected with some others. I was surrounded by funny drunk people that seemed to go overboard with the antics with each drink. When I got there I had made the announcement that I was only going to have a ONE drink which was greeted to a chorus of boo’s. I guess too many people were accustom to me being some ones “Uncle Larry” at the party. So, the host of the party, sister had made me one of her famous concoction that was just too good to pass up and left me pretty buzzed.

To make a long story short, a guy was asked to leave and in the act of trying to get him to leave the building we ending up fighting in the hallway. I know I am cutting out the juicy parts, but this situation took place for over the span of an hour and I really do not want to rehash everything. Before the fight, I thought he was an okay dude, a little too touchy for my taste, but still okay. At some point doing the night, tension started to brew between us, so knowing my temperament I avoided being around him until the event that is. I didn’t win or lose. After it was all said and done, he had some kind of emotional breakdown and I had a sore throat from him choking me for a couple of hours and a busted hand for a few days from punching him in the face. No one died, did a fatality and No one went to jail, even through the NYPD was called and came, they did what they do best which was nothing at all. Hours later as I was walking home, I posted a message on Facebook saying that I was surprised that out of all the hood dudes at the party, I was the one that had the fight. When I woke up, hung over and sore, I was a hot topic amongst my friends. Yeah, that’s never a good look. It was kind of embarrassing that I let myself take it to that level but as I reflect on it now, I probably would end up just chilling with the guy and maybe have a beer or 2. This is where I take a moment so share what I learned from this experience:

I need to hit the gym because my body was all kinds of f-ed up afterwards and if I was in better shape I would’ve bounced back faster.
I need to learn how to NOT let the little annoyances people have affected me.
I am too old for that type of bullshit.
Glad no one videotaped the fight and uploaded it on Youtube.

Kenny.

[My Life] Open Scars

2010-10-13T19:15:00.002-04:00

These last 18 months has been a whirlwind of events in my life, with the majority being out of my control. It started with my grandmother’s accident which caused me to drop out of school, not once but twice so I could be there full time for every up and down event. Having my mother and I savings accounts depleted because of hospital bills and other necessities which almost left us on the verge of homelessness. After my grandmother’s passing, throwing myself into a stressful job to catch up on the bills since my mother was laid off from one of her jobs. Yeah, there are a lot of things I had to deal with, especially now since I’ve been unemployed for little over a month and waiting with baited breathe for unemployment to kick in to pay the rent. Fingers and toes crossed people... After everything I’ve been through, I just needed to breath... And I have. It’s been one long expiration since I was laid off with nothing but free time on my hands.

I started to develop plans before I was laid off, but now it is just a matter of making those plans come to life. I am planning on going back to school to pursue a degree in social work, something that a mentor had expressed to me days before his passing I should go into. I will also try and take courses in Real Estate (my license had expired a few years ago so I need to start from scratch in order to get it back) and become a Notary Public to expand my income. I want to do a lot of volunteering in my community, since it would good on my resume and give me something to do with my free time. I plan on finishing writing my book and a couple of other writing projects that I’ve placed on hold so many times because one event or the other. There are some many things I have going but like it is said that sometimes the best laid plans can be hindered my the simplest ideals.

Stressed and struggle to get through the day to day function of life, I never took the time to just stop and take care of the emotional scars I had. Before this year, I was dealing with other issues like the extremely bitter end of a 3 year relationship which left me resentful on the whole concept of love, the uncertainty of where my life was going and worst of all the non-existent relationship I have with my sadist asshole of a father. Now, all those problems I had learned to bury over the years were now compounded with a whole host of unfamiliar trauma. Yeah, I was deeply depressed and at times a touch suicidal. If it wasn’t for the fact that I would leave my mother with no one to protect and look out for her, I would thrown myself over a bridge a long time ago. So I move on. I didn’t want to burden the people around me because I was never the type to just unload my problems onto others since people have been accustomed to only come to me with their problems as if I had the tools to fix it all. I don’t, but it always good to pretend to right?

When I was 20, things were so much simpler. I didn’t have to worry about rent or any of those grown up things because at that time I didn’t see myself as an actual grown up. Of course, I was at the age of maturity according to the law (I could vote, buy smokes, have sex, but not drink for some reason), but I was no way an real adult. I lacked the understanding to deal with the real world. Now that I am busting down the door of 30, I am much wiser than in my youth and can see that there are paths in front of me that I have to deal with that will determine how my life with continue. So, How do I chose this path? How do figure out what will help heal the scars that I have? I don’t know. I guess that is what adulthood is all about, figuring things out as you go along...

Kenny.

[Government and Politics] Independence Redefined.

2010-07-04T17:15:00.005-04:00

It’s another year and another reason for the American populous to branch out to the beaches, fill up their stomachs with insane amounts of processed burnt meats and fill the sky with fireworks. As I walk through around my neighborhood, all I could see are the red, white and blue American flags, that will be replaced in the coming weeks with flags from all over the Caribbean. These last few years I have really questioned why we as a country are so eager to celebrate the birth of our country when the foundation of the birth was based on lies, power, theft and death. Many times it makes me wonder what being an American really means. This country was built on the backs of those who could not defend themselves and when you even mention that fact, you’re bombarded with opposition from those who do not either understand our country’s past or refuses to acknowledge it even if it staring right in their face.

During the historic 2008 election which promoted a person of color to the highest office in the world, you saw a backlash from the conservative right declaring him anything BUT American. He was foreign born, he was a communist, he is elitist and doesn’t understand what REAL Americans go through… This is how the The Tea Party movement sparked the sometimes idiotic discussion about bringing this country back to what our forefathers intended. They built these grassroots rallies and marches funded by billionaires, promoted by a major conservative news network, hosted by out of work congress members, who used lies, propaganda and gullibility to woe the frighten masses.

Fear. The best element those in power can use to gain the trust of people who do not know any better. Recently, when Arizona passed the statue giving local authorities the power to demand documentation from those they have “reasonable” belief of being illegal aliens. It gives federal powers to local authorities to combat illegal immigration which is a issue that is something that the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT is suppose to deal with. I actual thought that something like this was a joke. That maybe, just maybe, someone would come to their senses and realize that this was wrong. If someone looks like they’re a certain ethnicity, when is it okay to assume if they are illegally in this country? It’s funny because many people like to pass the entire blame to the Obama Administration, stating that since the federal government is not during there job in protecting our borders then local governments has to do there part, I guess because no one wants to admit that the pervious President provided no solution in securing the southern borders even through that was one of the issues he PROMISED to solve during his 2004 re-election. Remember those, I will ban gay marriage, end the wars and stop the illegal speeches he used to give through the pulpits all over the southern states. I watched Karl Rove rant about President Obama didn’t care about the concerns of the Hispanic community, because he is only trying to secure voters of his 2012 re-election, something that Bush did might add, but then again Mr. Rove would obviously omit that fact. But then again many right-wing political pundits, like Karl Rove have used the blanket term of “terrorist” and “illegal alien” to invoke there base to rally for their cause since that’s the best marketing tool.

Do we live in a country were everyone is equal? I guess that is up for interpretation depending on who you are or where you live. It’s always obvious to me that we are not like other countries where segments of the population are in mental and physical chains, where people do NOT have the freedom of speech to speak about the ills of there perspective governments. Since September 11th, this country has redefined what it means to be free and at the same time limited what we could do and say. If you criticize anything America does, then YOU, my friend are not a true American. Many people do not believe me, which is okay. All anyone has to do is actually read the Patriot Act. It lays it out in black and white giving new powers to the government. Overnight, we allowed outrage and sorrow over 9/11 to give the Bush Administration the green light to help recreate the world for a select few to rule. There is a method to the madness. Keep the American public occupied with mindless drivel just long enough to enact law that strips way the rights provided in the constitution to the American public. The media will report the antics of vapid celebrities, while behind close doors dirty deals are being made.

Do you ever notice that we are always fighting a “them”. When you really think about it, it could mirror George Orwell’s Animal Farm. From the English, the Native Americans, the slaves, the Nazi’s, the Communist, the gays, the Muslims and even pirates… We have this “them” factor that is exploited by everyone in power.

Yeah, we are in the era of change but what has changed? As the years rapidly rushed by, the main political parties have passed the buck on what was the other guys fault while at the same time boosting they are actually helping this country through the hard times. The Democrats who used these “wars” or should I say occupation, in Iraq and now Afghanistan to their own political advantage this year more then ever. In 2006, when they took the House and Senate, they made a promise to put a stop to the Bush regime. Did that happen? Nope… Not one bit. After the Democrats took over the Congress and the White House, I wondered when in the hell they were going to enact make sweeping changes concerning the economy and future policies, but did they do it? At every given moment they while the debate of issues like healthcare reform would take place it became plainly obvious that there plan is to cower down to their GOP counterparts who found comfort in the minority. Think about it. They care just sit back and say I told you so if something goes wrong, while at the same time either voting down EVERYTHING the President has propose and not offering anything as a substitute.

Here is some home truth: 9/11 has become a lucrative cash cow. As awful as that sounds, it is very true. The right-wing media likes to down play that while at the same time promoting themselves as the ultimate in Americana. There are major companies who do not want to see this “war on terror” end anytime soon, because it is majorly profitable. Blackwater, Halliburton and most recently the oil companies like BP, who is poisoning the Gulf Coast as I write this, are reaping the benefits of it. The reason why most countries have a war is to have a war. In the end nothing is really gained, because waking moment this country is creating more and more enemies who are willing to fill in the shoes of fallen ones. Citizens in Middle Eastern countries are killed by the thousands and it seems no one in the United States bats an eye. Death begets death. Violence begets violence. The cycle will continue to repeat itself, unless something changes that.

Benjamin Franklin once said “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little safety deserve neither liberty nor safety” As this day comes to a close I want people to think about those words…

Kenny.

[Government and Politics] Dear Mr. Bloomberg…

2009-11-02T16:25:00.003-05:00

There is no doubt in my mine that you are going to win the New York City mayoral election occurring tomorrow, HOWEVER my vote will NOT be marked for you, Mr. Bloomberg. I don’t think you are a bad guy and if the circumstances were different maybe I would have a different reaction to your candidacy, but as of this moment I have to announce that I can not support you. So this election day, I will vote for Bill Thompson for Mayor. Do I think he is going to win? Hell no! You might come off with a bigger margin then the last election for several different reasons. The main one being that the Democrats haven’t nominated a decent candidate in years. Besides, you’ve been successfully painting the man every which way you can while trying to boost about your “accomplishments” in education and he has been unsuccessful at not only decelerating who he is and WHY he is better then you, but the direction New York City needs. After seeing the only two debates on NY1 and on ABC channel 7, those points I made earlier became very clear.

However I wanted to take a moment and explain why you are not getting my vote in the election tomorrow, as meaningless as it may seems. As of late last year, you have constantly blamed the national economy for the woes of the city. While it is true that the world was going to shit in a basket with massive layoffs and bailouts to companies that became to big to fail, the cost of living in New York City had gone up dramatically since you’ve been in office before that time. While it has never been cheap to live in this city, it really says something when you find yourself paying double or triple for necessities and rent. The New York sales tax went up to 8.8% (that was just this past summer, right after the fiasco in Albany), The MTA has raised the fare amount many times on unlimited rides and twice on the base fare as you stood by and did nothing (from $1.50 to $2.25). What happen to the reform of the MTA that you had promised on the campaign trail twice before? The only proposal you have put out there has been the congestive pricing plan (which failed thankfully) to further tax people here in the city. I guess we all have to do our part right? The MTA received a bail out and do whatever they want and new Yorkers get to flip the bill. Whenever the topic is brought up concerning the MTA , you nonchalantly dismiss the asker as some kind of a nuisance. You have a habit of doing that, Mr. Bloomberg and it is very disrespectful.

By the way, Mr. Bloomberg, Downtown Brooklyn is slowly disappearing. I don’t know if you know this or if this is a part of the master plan started by Dinkins and his administration to continue the removal of the middle class from the city of New York. The once focal point of Fulton Street, Albee Mall has been torn down to make way for more and more condos that 80% of the people cannot afford. Why? Because you and your flunkies in the city council have pushed emanate domain to further displace New Yorkers living around the Atlantic rail yards, since that is the site for the future home of the Net’s Stadium. A stadium that was a part of your unsuccessfully bid to win the summer Olympics for 2012.

As you lead your war against tobacco smoking (which I understand, but do not like, because of health concerns), by making the price of a pack of smokes raise from 4 -5 dollars a pack to, in some places 11 – 12 dollars a pack… not once have I seen you go after alcohol or any other product that might have adverse affects to one’s health with that same gusto. It’s like I can’t have a drink at the bar or club and smoke at the same time plus I have to take out a personal loan for pack, but can get a beer for 99 cents and get into a car. What kind of sense does that make?

Honestly, I do not think you know the feeling of what it like to live in a place where you have to struggle with the Landlord for heat during the long winter months. I wonder if you know what it feels like to know that any day you will have to mange without electricity because you had to pay other bills instead of Con Ed that month. As I see from many Youtube clips, you like to ride mass transit, but do you have any idea what it is like to feel the pinch when the MTA ups the fare and trying to come up with the money to pay for your only means of transportation to support yourself AND everything else. Yes, there is no doubt in my mind that you are out of touch with many of the citizens of this city.

However my main concern was this…

You see, right after 9/11 when the whole country was going gaga over Rudy Giuliani and calling him “America’s Mayor” for some strange reason during the last few weeks of him term, there was mention of extending his term beyond the limit. The reason why I voted for you was because you were probably the only person that said NO WAY! That the citizens of this state voted for term limits and it would be up the next mayor to continue the job. That was why I voted for you, Mr. Bloomberg. I thought you understood that term limits was something voted by the people of this city. For weeks you were on the stomping ground trying to pump life into the idea that YOU were the only one that could get this city through it’s finical woes. You however took it upon yourself to go through the city council and had it overturned. What backroom deals did you make to get that done, Mr. Bloomberg? Plus you have the absolute GAUL to belittle, name call and dismiss those that question your motives. When one day you give speeches about how dire the city’s economy was and yours is the only leadership the city needs to get past it… then turn around and give another speech about it was on the rebound, do you not expect people to question ONCE AGAIN your reasoning behind a third term?

This little blog will mostly not matter because you are the status quo. It is better the have the devil you know then the one you don’t right. On election night, while you are celebrating your third tern as mayor, I will seek comfort in the fact that I’ve made the right choice in who I voted for.

You have bought this election, Mr. Bloomberg. I hope it was worth it…

Kenny.

[My Life] The Good Lord will provide, just NOT today… (Pt. 1)

2009-10-26T22:00:00.004-04:00

1: Day Three

My body smelled something horrible. I haven’t noticed that fact until I was underneath the weak currents of my bathroom’s showerhead. After spending the past couple of days on energy that I didn’t have, my sore and bruised body felt as if it could not go on. The lack of sleep, food and pain was obviously taking it’s toll. I closed my eyes and let the warm water pour down my body. I was trying so hard to convince myself that this was just really a nightmare I was having and not reality. However, the pain and discomfort of my swollen face, mouth and my blistered hands and body were undeniable. Standing there with my eyes closed, flashes of the event flooded my mind. My grandmother, the fire, everything was coming in like a tidal wave and it was unbearable. Why wasn’t I fast enough? Why did this have to happen to her and not me? Why did we have that stupid fight hours before it happened? Mixed in with soap and shower water, the tears began to flow. Wincing ever so often as I pass the wash cloth over the sensitive areas of my body that were still badly bruised, the odor I smelled was slowly being replaced with the smell of Old Spice body wash.

Twenty minutes later, I stood there naked in front of the bathroom mirror. My right cheek was still red, raw and beginning to blister. My 2 front teeth were gone with three others barely holding on. The tips of my fingers were already blistering and spreading to the palm of my hand. There were blotches on the right side of my body that seemed to develop. Taking some ointment, I smeared them on my wounds and bandaged as much as possible. It will be okay, I told myself half-heartedly. I had spent so much time trying to figure myself out, trying to understand who I was and what I wanted to be in this life that I never excepted something like this to happen… and to all people, my grandmother. One minute I was posting a blog about using Twitter and the next thing I know I was in a borough that I never thought I would ever be in hoping that my grandmother was still alive. None of it made sense to me. Once again, the tears fall uncontrollably.

When I finally collected myself after several minutes, I began cleaning up the bathroom and putting on some underwear. Once I was finally dressed, I knocked on my mother’s bedroom door. She was up, just barely, sitting next to my grandmother’s unmade bed. She wasn’t ready to go to the hospital just yet, in fact she wasn’t even prepared to take a shower. She looked at me with a glazed look and asked me to run to the ATM to take out some money to pay a bill that was due that day and put some money on our metrocards for the trip out to see my grandmother. I agreed, took the ATM card, the bill and her metrocard off her bed without breaking a stride. As I was leaving, I told my mother to listen out for the phone and to be ready to go when I get back. She nodded, but it was obvious that she was in another place altogether.

2: Breakdown

The second I left my apartment building, I could feel the cool breeze hit my freshly washed face. Everything seemed ghostly as I moved out of the door and around a couple of tenants, a man and a woman, that lived on the top floor of my building. They stopped me in mid stride. By now, I suspected that the whole building was a buzzing about what had happened to my grandmother. “Hey!” said the woman in that sweet friendly tone that was almost to diabetic. “How are you? How is grandma?” I gave a shrug and told her that we didn’t know. I didn’t want to nor did I feel the need to share intimate details of my family pain to people that will add to the building gossip pool.

At this time in the morning, kids were running around a local schoolyard, people were making there way to the train station and cars were speeding down the parkway, but I didn’t notice any of it. My thoughts lingered on my grandmother. If this was any other day, I would be in school, my mother would be at work and my grandmother would be at home watching her stories with the bible in her lap and my cat Kimiko at her feet. It was a twenty minute walk to the bank from my house. I had to travel through a couple of long streets, go through a local park and past the busy intersection of Utica and Eastern Parkway. Surprisingly the bank was empty, a good thing since I was in no mood to wait. At the ATM, the card would not work. After trying twice more, I realize what the problem was… the card had expired. So I departed cursing to myself. Arriving home, I told my mother about the problem with the ATM card and she instantly lost it. “I can’t lose her…, I can’t… I’m not ready!” my mother kept mumbling through her tears while tearing through her papers. She threw a box on the floor in frustration and collapsed onto her bed in a heap, burying her face in her hand. I knelt down grabbed her. For the first time I need to be strong for her at a time when I couldn’t even be strong for myself. She sobbed on my shoulder as I fought back the tears. Grandma’s a fighter, I told myself. She will get better. She had too.

“Mama, take your time and look for your new card and if you can’t find it, we will find another way to get the money out of the bank” I told her. As my mother started to collect herself, the phone rang. The Caller ID display on the television scrolled: STATEN ISLAND UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL with a number that I didn’t recognize. It was a mad dash to grab one of the headsets in the house, which I was hoping would work.

“Hello, may I speak with the daughter of **** ***?” asked a soft-spoken woman.

“Um… that’s my mother. Is everything alright with my grandmother” I said with my heart beating a mile a minute.

“Yes, Yes… she is still stable. This is the grandson, right? Kenny?”

I nodded, forgetting that she could not actually see me.

“Yes, that’s me” I answered as I handed off one of the headsets to my mother.

“Hello!!!” my mother chimed in.

“Hi, Ms. ***, I was just telling your son that everything is … still the same, I just wanted to know if either you-“

“We’re definitely coming” my mother interrupted.

“Oh okay, good… I am the Social Worker here at the burn unit and I would like to meet with you when you come here today about your mother and the fire…”

My mother and the social worker spoke for a few more minutes as I listened on. She gave us her name and number at the hospital and after we hung up, my mother took a deep breathe and started the search for her new ATM card once again. After a few minutes, she found it with a sigh of relief. I grabbed my jacket once again and repeated my journey to the bank, this time leaving my mother running around the house trying to get things done. By the time I arrived home once again, she was dressed and made us lunch for the day. At this time, we were now ready to go to Staten Island to face what was to come.

3: Journey

Until this moment in my life, I never had a reason to go to Staten Island. To put it frankly, there was never a reason for it. We were still working out the timing of each ferry, when they arrive at the terminal and how often an hour do they come. When we arrived, there was a crowd forming at one of the doors. Some how we maneuvered ourselves through the crowd of people to get as close to the door as possible. With in minutes half of the terminal was overflowing with people. When the ferry docked and the double doors open it was like this race to get in the boat. Since I was faster, I half walked, half ran inside and got a seat for us in the front of the boat. I held my mother’s hand on during the boat ride. As I stared out of the window, I could not but to take in the beauty of the city. It was weird. At the age of 28, I felt like a kid again when I went with my mother to the statue of liberty… but of course, this wasn’t a good trip or a trip that we wanted to take at all.

Within 30 minutes, we docked and after the ferry departure, we dashed along with the crowd to one of the bus ramps for the S52. It was the only bus available to take us directly to the hospital. As we waited, I sat on one of the benches holding onto my bag and the lunch back my mother had prepared for us. A little girl walked past holding onto her mother’s hand. She stopped, pulled her mother’s hand and asked her: “Why his face all messed up?” Her mother grabbed her up and pulled her along, telling her that it wasn’t nice to say things like that to strangers. At that moment I felt like the Elephant Man, because I forgotten that I had I bandage covering the right side of my face. I did look like a freak, didn’t I… but my wounds were not as bad as my grandmothers were.

As the bus turned the corner, we mounted into one of those hybrid buses and started traveling through out the hill, slopes and communities of the Island. One second you are in the projects of Jersey Street, then you are staring at million dollar homes, the suburbs, a very lame downtown district and more projects. It was something I had never seen before, because it was all within blocks of one another. After almost an hour on the bus, were we in front of the Staten Island University Hospital. The sidewalk was littered with discarded cigarette butts, nurses smoking and people chugging down coffees. Wild Turkeys just walking by wobbling around while people gawk at them. I seriously thought I was heading into the zoo and not a hospital. We entered the lobby, made a couple of turn and started down the corridor to the unit my grandmother was in.

“I am going to use the bathroom” my mother told me as she handed me the lunch bag. I nodded and told her I was going to go on ahead. I entered the Burn Unit ICU and after washing my hands, I went to my grandmother’s room and stopped dropping my bags. My mouth dropped in horror. The bed in the room was stripped bare and the machines were turned off. “WHERE IS MY GRANDMOTHER???” I screamed with tears beginning to form in my eyes. “WHERE IS SHE???”

Kenny.

[My Life] A Broken Mind

2009-10-11T18:15:00.002-04:00

Late September, 8 years ago, I died.

Every person has some sort of dark chapter in there lives they would never want to relive. For me, it was a little over 8 years ago when I tried to commit suicide. However before I can talk about that event I must enlighten you the reader about how it happened. 2001 was not one of my highlight years. Besides the events surround 9/11, I was on a slippery slope of self-destruction. Up until that point, I lived my life at arms length from everyone else in the world out of fear that I would be hurt.

The problem was I didn’t value my self worth and often took out all the negative emotions I had internally. I was only 20 and even through I suffered from depression for most of my life, this was something completely different. You see, I couldn’t feel anything. Good or Bad, it didn’t matter because I was just unable to feel any emotion. I started to abuse alcohol and painkillers, behind my family and friends back just to make myself feel something more than emptiness, more than then disappointment I caused others or failure. I faced the real possibility of losing my mind and there came to a point where I no longer cared.

A lot of the time in the African American community, depression or mental disease is something that is not either talked about or even acknowledge. Why? Because there are other things, you are except you to worry about and get through no matter what like bills, work, family, etc… All I kept hearing was: Take it to God, but to me God wasn’t listening. So I was left alone with my destructive thoughts. Until one night while very depressed and drunk, I tried to end my life with a mass dose of different prescriptions medications. My mental state was so fragile at best but it made sense to me that this world would be better without me.

Almost everything around that event is still foggy even today, a side affect of the several seizures that I had. I floated around, that I can remember clearly. I saw the doctors and nurses all around my body pushing things in and out of me. It was one of those out of body experiences that you hear about however there was no bright light or tunnel around me. Just space… just empty isolated space that I wonder through aimlessly without direction. It was similar to the way my life was at that point… and so I died, but I was brought back. For a few minutes my heart stopped and I was brought back to witness what my actions had done to not only myself but my entire family. It was at this point I was diagnosis as Manic Depressive (Bipolar), sent to a psychiatric hospital for over a week and then referred for follow-up therapy .

I was ashamed to say the least and as the days and weeks went by, I pretended that it really didn’t happen. That maybe it was a nightmare. I even went as far as to tell the people closest to me that I had some sort of surgery and never talked about it again. A fact I only realized a short time ago when I was talking to one of my best friends about it and he had no idea that I actually overdosed.

Now that I am older, I’ve opened up more concerning that situation. I don’t hide the fact that I tried to commit suicide anymore, in fact I’ve been open and honest about it because I know there is some one out there that is going through or did go through similar things I went through. So you might ask yourself: Do I believe in man’s version of God saved my life that day? No, no I do not. However, I do believe that something brought me back for some reason yet determined. A reason that I need to find out for myself one day…

Kenny.

[Lifestyles] Blackout

2009-08-14T16:00:00.002-04:00

Think back for a second and try to remember where you were 6 years ago today. Most likely if you lived in the north east section of the United States or in some parts of Canada you would’ve been in darkness. A total and complete Blackout.

Picture it!

New York City.

The Date is August 14.
The year is 2003.

It was one of the hottest and humid days of the summer when all of a sudden, just after 4 in the afternoon the day long power outage began. Lucky for me, I just got home from work and began to work on my novel. My mother was out grocery shopping and my grandmother was in the living room with her friend, talking as they watched Judge Judy. Out of no where, everything thing around just shut down. My first thought was: “Oh crap, did I pay the bill”. It took me a second to locate the receipt in a draw and exhale a sigh of relief.

So I was really puzzled on what was going on, now. I ventured out to the living room where my grandmother asked me what I did to turn the TV off. Just like my room, the whole apartment was without power. I told both of the ladies that I was going to find the Super, in which my grandmother told me NOT to because she didn’t want any trouble. For some reason she thought we would get in trouble and get kicked out of RENT CONTROLLED apartment if we complained or asked for help. I really didn’t want to spend the time to explain so I just left. In the hallway a young girl was braiding some boys’ hair and inquired if the power went out in their apartment. She told me yes nonchalantly, as if it something like this happen everyday. Through the stairway window, I could see the 3 train was stuck on the elevated tracks behind my building. The traffic lights and store around were completely dark inside. Cars were cautiously moving to and fro. People were stumbling around in the state of confusion. I walked one floor down where a crowd of people had collected talking about the outage. Many thought this was another ploy by the new landlord, but after informing them that everything was dark outside as well, many started to take out radios from their apartments. After a few minutes of hearing what we all knew, everyone pulled out there cell phones and started making calls since they all said that there home phones (all cordless) were no longer working.

By this time, my mother was making her way up the stair drenched with sweat and carrying the empty shopping cart and I informed her of the situation and after some choice words, she joined the conversation, briefly. We went back into the apartment where I went into my room and pulled out a box buried in my closet. It contained an old corded phone that worked just perfectly. Funny, how everyone in this digital age forget the benefits of a corded phone.

After making a few phone calls, my mother and I rambled around the house to see what supplies we had. It’s funny when you realize how unprepared you are for an emergency when it actually happens. Our family had two little battery operated portable televisions, a container of matches, about 6 flashlights and there were no batteries or candles in the entire house. I couldn’t believe it at all. This presented a minor dilemma. We would have to go out and get as much as we could before people lost there damn minds and did something stupid. It was too late for that. When we went outside cops cars raced pasted our building like a bolt of lightening.

Great. I wasn’t even a thought during the 1977 blackout, but I was going to witness it reincarnate itself in 2003.

Most of the stores on Rutland Road, which is the little shopping strip in my neighborhood, were closing or would not allow anyone in expect for one store right next to the Sutter Ave./Rutland Road 3 train station. It was a small little discount store that people were starting to gather around. Thankfully we managed to get inside within a few minutes. The store was total dark besides that light coming from the outside. One of the employees stood in middle of an aisle, blocking so no one could further back into the store. We scooped up as many batteries as we could, but the small space was no match to the massive amount of people trying to get in.

A guy started, about 18 – 20, started to push pass the employee. The employee pushed back and all of a sudden the store erupted in chaos. It was a blur really, much of it went by so quickly that I moved on instinct. The guy and his friends started a fight that spilled outside of the store. In retaliation that started to throw whatever was in front of the store at anything that moved. A woman and her child were in the middle. I pushed my mother to the side and grabbed the baby carriage to move it out of the way. The child’s mother was screaming hysterically and asking why. When the coast was clear we ran out of the store, breathing a sigh of relief. As we walked the child’s mother kept screaming, yelling and saying: “Why are you people like this!” I placed my hand on her shoulder and told her sternly that she needed to take her and her child home as fast as she could. I don’t know is she realized that even through I could tell she was a fair skinned Spanish woman, she looked Caucasian in a neighborhood that mostly African-American or Caribbean.

For the rest of the afternoon, the family sat around the televisions hearing the updates as they came, watching the interviews with people as they walked around in the blazing sun and saw the Mayor lie about how everything was okay. After the sun went down, my neighborhood fell into total darkness. There was this eerie silence through out the streets only disturbed by the occasional car or pedestrian. By candle light I wrote in my journal, documenting the events of the day and thinking for cool things to combat the humidity.

On the morning of the 15th, the streets were once again deserted, but as time went on, some stores would open while others were completely shut down. Grocery stores that had there own generator limited the amount of people enter while others only sold perishables like milk and meat. Once the power was restored later that afternoon, people wanted to examine the causes. Was it Con Ed? Terrorism? Sponge Bob Square Pants? But like all things in this world everything started to go on as if nothing had happen. The aftermath of Blackout 2003 was seen in neighborhoods like Flatbush for months afterwards. Several stores were broken into, looted, and in one case a sneaker store was burn down, but you didn’t hear about it on the news. The Mayor constantly talked about how nothing went wrong besides little pockets.

Yeah right…

Kenny.

[Faith] Is “Religion” mental slavery?

2009-08-13T12:55:00.006-04:00

I wanted to ask those out there a very simple question. Is Religion a form a mental slavery? I’ve been thinking about this for sometime now and when I ask people who consider themselves “religious” they give me this deer caught in the headlights expression and never give me a concrete answer. I wonder many times if “Religion” is just a tool that the powers that be out there use to have us do there bidding in the world.

Growing up, most people in my family were heavily involved in the Baptist church, but I was one of those kids that really didn’t get the whole concept of believing in something just because. It’s not like I wanted to see God himself, I just wanted some one to explain to me why this “religion” was the right one over all others. Being a youngster, my questions were just dismissed and I was told that I had to believe because if I didn’t then I was going to Hell. Threats like that kept in line for awhile. I didn’t go to church because I believed, most times I was asleep in the pewees waiting for that final prayer while people danced and shouted in the aisles because the caught the “spirit”. It was that fear that if I didn’t go then I was damned.

When I began to study in African American history in college, I asked my pastor why any African-Americans would believe in the Bible when it was something that was forced down slaves throats by there masters. I even mention the whole “Curse of Ham” theory (Curse of Ham is supposes to be a curse that Noah placed on his son Ham’s children and descendants to be slaves to Ham’s brothers descendants, because Ham saw his father’s nakedness as he lay in a drunken sleep.) many people of faith used during slavery to justify its existence. Once again, after 15 minutes of bible quotes, I never received a solid answer, which caused me to not to return.

As an adult, I’ve become very wary of “religion”. I do have faith there is a Higher Power in the universe. A being that is just and all knowing, but I believe that many of the worlds “religions” distort it to fit their own agenda. The most horrible atrocities done in world history have been done in the name of God, men like Jim Jones, who used religion as a way to attract followers to come to the People’s Temple in Guyana, comes to mind.

So I am going to leave this to a debate. Is “religion” just a tool to trap people in some sort of mental slavery, being blind followers to something that may or may not be real or is it something good that will bring people closer to the God they believe?

Kenny.

[My Life] Personal Space.

2009-08-12T23:30:00.004-04:00

For those that do not know I am a big fan of personal space and get really upset when someone tries to force there way into my personal space. So, here’s the story that happened this afternoon. I had to go Western Beef to get a soda, and when I got on the line, a woman had her shopping cart nowhere near the cashier, so I stood at the end of the line. She then said “Excuse me, but I am on the line” in a heavy Spanish accent. Instead of making a fuss, I just made a comment like she should’ve been standing in the right place and not 10 feet away, and allowed her to get in front of me. After waiting like ten minutes to pay for one item I was getting frustrated. This guy decides to stand next to me and place his bag of corn on put it on the shopping cart in front of me. I had to move away from him because he had this smell. Not a smell of funk, but a smell of some one showering in too much Brute cologne. It was extremely over powering. I thought maybe this guy was with the two people that were in front of me, because he started talking to the guy. When the woman came back and inquired about the corn. The man said “Oh, naw… this guy is resting his corn on our cart”.

So I am getting ready mentally to tell this guy that he has to go behind me since I was clearly after these two people. Before I could say anything, a new cashier opened up. The guy stated that he was open and I went to go on that line. Here’s the kicker, as I started to walk to that line, that man PUSHED me forward.

THAT IS THE BIGGEST FUCKING NO-NO YOU CAN DO TO ME!!!

So I stopped, turned around and screamed at this man, not to touch me. In this crowded supermarket, I wanted to grab my full 3 littler bottle and beat him with it. His reply to me was “Oh, you want no one to touch you!” with the heavy island accent and for some reason he started to get upset.

I laid it out like this: “Not only did you touch me, you pushed me! I don’t know you so what are you pushing people to this line! That’s something you don’t do at all. If I had knocked you in the eye with my elbow when you first started touched me, I would’ve been wrong… so keep your f-ing hands to yourself!” (Yes, I did say f-ing… I was trying really hard to not curse)

This is where the Spanish lady with the shopping cart three feet away from the cashier wanted to put her 2 cents saying that she’s been on this line longer and started to complain in Spanish to the manager about us cutting in line. The cashier rang me up and I paid, but he didn’t bag my soda. Cursing under my breath, I was about to bag it myself when he took the soda and told me: “Don’t let them stress you, pa” then gave me the bag. I said thank you and left.

I am just glad I didn’t catch a case.

Kenny.

[A Negro in Black America] Acting Black

2009-08-10T10:55:00.006-04:00

While on the phone with a friend of mines, he made a statement to me that I found very troubling. He stated that he told his friend, who is Caucasian, that he was “acting black”. When I asked him what that means, he told me that his friend was unmotivated, becoming increasingly lazy and not doing anything with his life but using drugs and having random sex. This shocked and offended me greatly. My friend, who is a dark skinned African American, just belittled his own race and he couldn’t understand the repercussion of what he said and why I was so upset with him.

I asked him: “Do you do any of that stuff?”

He promptly said: “No.”

I followed up with this: “Then why are you stereotyping yourself and as being the things you told him he was being?”

He replied with: “Well look outside and that is what you see!”

I was disappointed with his replies to this and other questions I asked him and we argued for quite some time about what “acting black” really means. With that one phrase, he stereotyped every African American, including himself as trash. That to be black is to be the lowest in society.

In a previous blogs on other sites, I talked about how education and success in some urban areas is not seen as an accomplishment, but a person who endlessly trying to be something that they are not, which is Caucasian. They are called Uncle Toms, Oreos and a whole host of other names, by people that share there own skin color. So why do we divide ourselves along the lines of race? If you act white, then you are a sellout and not respected… If you act black then you are ghetto and will never amount to anything…, but can a person really act a skin color? You can’t help but to shake your head at the acceptable racism and self hatred that still dwells in our society and this time I am only talking about those in the African American community.

Who should be blamed for this? The government? Anyone who is Caucasian? Our own selves? In fact is there anyone to blame at all?

Kenny.

[My Life] I Heart Me… (Sort of)

2009-08-09T16:15:00.003-04:00

I love myself. Even on my crappiest of days, I try to look in the mirror and say that over again until it sticks. In this day and age, people really do not do that as much as they should. In previous blog called I am, I expressed that people should accept themselves the way they are flaws and all since they are the only one who can work them into something unique and special. Yes, I do love myself… However, there is a small problem with that. I can say I love myself all I want but, I have to admit that I sort of don’t at the same time.

I’ve smoked cigarettes for over 10 years knowing the full weight of what they are doing to my health. Yet still, I block it from my mind when I am lighting up that Marlboro between my lips. It’s an after thought really. Those minutes that people say cigarettes take off of your life are years and year’s away right? Well no… but that is the logic behind my continues use. I went from a 4 pack a day habit (when they were like $2.50 a pack) to a pack every 2 days (Damn you Governor Patterson for raising the price so high that you need a Pell Grant to afford one!), which most would say is excellent, but not good enough.

Besides I am not getting any younger. The 30 year marker is looming over my head like a vulture and I am out of shape. Adding to the problem that I do not eat right, it’s like a time bomb lurking in the weeds. I know that I need to get healthier, but it seems every time I try to work out some sort of a plan to something… There is this force from stopping me. That force is me!

I can say I love myself, but my actions do not match those words. How can I REALLY love myself when I am not taking the actions to live in prolonged life? I am, like so many people in the world, a work in progress. The old habits of that I have from yesteryears need to be morphed in into something productive. Now I understand while I am saying that I care and love myself, I need to follow up with actions that prove it at the same time.

Kenny.

[My Life] Embarrassing Moments.

2009-07-26T12:05:00.003-04:00

Did you every have one of those moments where you find yourself in a very compromising position. Last summer, I had one of those moments in my own home. Even through we had a very mild summer here in New York there were some days where it was hot as hell leaving me sweating more than a nun with a positive pregnancy test.

Well, sometime during a very humid night, I became hot and decide to sleep in the nude. No big problem really, however I was in the living room of my family’s apartment. You see, I wake up before my grandmother and in the mornings. She usually just wakes up and goes into the bathroom for about 20 minutes and then rushes back into her room and does appear again for another hour at the most.

During that time I usually slept in the living room because the cable and computer are both in arms reach. Since it was Saturday morning, I like watching the cartoon network while writing or listening to my songs on the PC. So it was like just after 7 a.m. and I wasn’t excepting my mother home for another hour from her night shift at her job. The plan was to wait until 7:30 and take a cold shower and be dressed before she walks into the door. As we all know the best laid plans are usually flawed. I gave myself 5 more minutes of sleep and that 5 minutes turned into 45. I awoken to my mother screaming at me to get off the couch and put some clothes on. Now, I walk around this house during the summer in only boxers half the time, so I know she would not have been shocked to see me there, but through my sleepy phase, I turned to her and saw another woman standing next to her. There I am nude as a jay bird and my mother’s friend from work just looking at me and smiling. Yeah, Good Time… Of course I high tailed it to my room for the length of her stay.

Yeah it was SOOO embarrassing and all that was running through my as I hid was the gossip that was going to occur at my mother’s job the next week. After she left, my mother, instead of screaming at me, she couldn’t stop laughing and saying that this will teach me to not wear clothes in the house. Good Parenting, Mother…

Kenny.

[My Life] Fire Happens

2009-07-25T07:18:00.011-04:00

Last month there was a fire in the building across the street from me. I was getting ready to go to Staten Island when I felt this kind of explosion from the outside. Within minutes I heard fire trucks roaring around the neighborhood. At first I thought it might’ve been my building. I already had to deal with the aftermath of one fire I did not think I was strong enough to deal with another. However, when I left my apartment there were people in the hallway, looking through the windows towards the building across the street. Outside there were tons of fire trucks, police cars and bystanders looking at the scene unfolding in front of us. A firefighter was helping a frighten woman down the fire escape. There was a brief second where I thought she would fall but the man grabbed her tight even with that smoke and flames biting at there heels. Seriously, the whole thing looked like a scene from either Third Watch or Rescue Me. As I stood there, I had the foresight to take a photo of the scene, but most of the madness was over before I found that cheap ass camera. The pervious day, a car exploded near the train tracks by a garage. No one knows exactly what happened (except for the people who did it of course), but the smoky ruins could be seen and smelled for blocks around.

Yesterday, I was in the foulest of moods. At a certain point, I laid down and really did not want to be bothered with anyone or anything. For twenty minutes, I just laid there In silence until I heard a knock on the door and screaming that there was a fire. Opening my door of my apartment, smoke was everywhere. I went back into the living room, put some clothes on and walked to the other said of the building where others where gathering trying to get out. Smoke was looming all around. It was a smell that I recognized but could not put my finger on. As I descended to the lobby, more and more smoke appeared coming from the other side of the building, my side of the building really but on another floor. As people piled out, firefighters rushed in and I was out of it. For twenty minutes, I waited outside wondering where this fire was coming from and if it was going to destroy the whole building until the only Black firefighter on the scene came out with the object. Some one had set fire to a trash container in the incinerator on the second floor. Fucking idiots, I swear. I personally I think it was one of the kids in this building who run around like idiots, half naked might I add playing stupid games when there is a park like 3 blocks away. But I digress…

While going down was easy, going back up the stairs proved to be much harder as all the floors were now flooded in off-white smoke that smelled like brunt plastic. For a second I was overwhelmed, but I pushed myself to my floor and to the apartment. For a little while, I was dizzy and I ended up sitting on the couch for what I thought was a few minutes but ended up passing out. I came too around, 10 this evening, dazed and confused. It’s about 4 in the morning. I can’t sleep. I have a slight headache that is slowly going away on it’s own and I am cold. What a wonderful day…

Kenny.

[Lifestyles] Flashing Jackson

2009-07-25T05:00:00.006-04:00

I get it. You have the ability to gather in front you of you a lot of bills with the face of Andrew Jackson on them and you understand the complexities of a digital camera to take a picture. Plus you understand the how to upload a photo onto your webpage.

Here’s the thing through…

ONLY MORONIC FOOLS FLASH AROUND MONEY AND POSTS PHOTOS OF THEMSELVES DOING SO ONTO THEIR PAGE!!!

Now that you got the memo, stop doing it! I know it’s the realm of cyberspace, but actions in cyberspace have very real consequences. What if an uncouth person in your area stumbles onto your myspace.com page and sees your happy ass holding up a wad of 20 dollar bills. Do you think that he is not going to start checking for you in the future? Many times I wonder with all that flashing, how much of the money is actually the person who is fanning it. You have grown ass men in there 30’s still living at home with their mother, have no job or prospects trying to avoid there umpteen child support request, trying to internet pimp with some one else’s money. I can not count how many pages I see on different networking site, where guys and a few girls are flashing around money like it’s going out of style. Some people even think it’s cute to drown some infant in paper money as well. Newsflash, money has germs. In fact some still have drug residue on them and you are going put that all round a child that really hasn’t developed a strong immune system yet? Where are child protection services when you need them, huh?

...

I think I am going to blame the Hip-Hop with this one. When you see certain rappers going around flashing the bling they have around their necks and teeth, throwing money in the air like they don’t need it any more, getting people thinking that it would be cool for them to do the same thing as well. But you know what they never show the rappers doing? Putting that money they earn in a bank account which is entrust baring! Unfortunately that might lead to a new group of fools posting photos of themselves at the ATM punching in their code.

Kenny.

[Lifestyles] Dead End

2009-07-23T12:40:00.002-04:00

After I watched the video above this morning, I started to wonder if this was staged somehow or could people really be this idiotic to film themselves while hold guns and talking about hustling when their face is clearly shown on camera. Besides that point I started to wonder about the people who are not in front of the camera, but doing the exact same things portrayed in the video snippet. What do we do about them? Shouldn’t there be this giant uproar from our so-called Negro leader about this matter? The 800lb Gorilla in the room that at times no one seems to want notice are the atrocities that we do to one another. I find it interesting how the same people who want to hold accountable other people for their misdeeds against the African-American community, happily ignore what’s going on within the community itself. Are we no longer compelled to speak out against all violence and situations that bring down us as a community or should it be the norm now? A better question is: Why are so many people willing to glorify the negative aspects?

I tried to set some sort of rationalization in my mind and the only conclusion I could come up with was that this life is their DEAD END, so nothing really mattered to them anymore. Nothing, but the here and now and what they can accumulate in the meantime. How can some one feel worth anything when they see nothing around them that IS worth anything? If this video was real, the people exposed have accepted the fact that there is nothing more to what they see in front of them since some many have been detoured because of lack of education, employment opportunities, health care and other hurtles that seem to just knock people off the straight and narrow path and onto the broad and crowded one, which only leads to the dead ends of prison and premature death.

If this video is false, you have people trying to glorify or make role models of images that clearly DO NOT deserve it and once again exploit a “Thug Gangster Lifestyle” we see all over the mass media. Besides, with so many people of color advancing in the arenas of politics, film and industry, a child’s role model should not be Pookie the drug dealer that stands on the corner, but some one who is going to stand for them even when they do not have the strength to stand for themselves. While parents carry the bulk of the responsible in making sure that their children are taught with certain moral values, I ask myself if the old proverb that it takes a village to raise a child is true. In fact shouldn’t we all be each others keeper in this day and age? Is it finally time for people to stand up and say that this is not acceptable anymore and we want it out of our neighborhoods?

Kenny.

[My Life] Adventures in Employment.

2009-07-23T11:55:00.003-04:00

I was 23, unemployed and had no idea what I wanted to do with my life besides being a writer. My mother’s solution was of course to GET A JOB! So, I started going on an interview blitz. My mother one morning placed a classified AD in front of my face of a company looking for general office work. I called, made an appointment for that day since it was in the same area inQueens I had to go to that morning for another office job interview.

That afternoon as I rushed down Woodhaven Blvd. to keep this appointment, something told me to just turn back and go home. But that was drowned out by the angry voice of my mother telling me to move my ass…

The office was shabby looking. The walls were painted this ugly hospital blue color and many areas needed repair desperately. The “reception” area, if you can call it that, was lined with these raggedy beat down chairs. Since hindsight is always 20/20, that should’ve been my queue to run for the hills, but I was so nervous about getting this job that I just held onto my thin resume for dear life. After a few minutes and a few more people arriving, I sat down with one of the people who was going to interview me. She was a nice Puerto Rican woman, friendly and talked very fast. She explained about the company she was working for and after a few minutes of Q&A, she said that I should call back around 5 that afternoon after she reviewed the information. Nervous, thinking that was her kind way of giving me the brush off and that I would never see her again, I called and she told me that I had one more step to be hired and congratulations. I was SOOO f-ing excited. The next step was the group interview directed by Puerto Rican woman along with her husband the following day. They went more in-depth about the company they worked for and how we too can be like them if we pass this point. They explain that this was a sales job with opportunity to advance to own and manager your own store.

Still excited about this new opportunity I did my best to shine above everyone else, which I did. I didn’t even have to call back! The woman pulled me to the side and told me that training was going to begin on Friday and I should be here bright and early. The training was going to be unpaid, but there incentives I could achieve. On that day, I walked in all spiffy in my suit with a positive attitude and sat aside the other 7 people who were picked from the second interview. As the man talked about the multi level advancement system and what the company offered, some of that excitement evaporated. By the end of that first training day, the goal was to sell at least five items that cost 20 dollars a piece.

Mind you that everyone I knew at the time were living hand to mouth, having them break off 20 bucks for an item they were not going to get until the next week was impossible. I went by my old GED school and sat with the employment coordinator who I had becomes friends with. I showed her the information I had received from the company, the products and pamphlets. She took one look and started laughing and started pulling out job fair listings, vocational school brochures and anything else she could get her hands on to place right in front of me. When I told her that I could own my own store, she laughed even harder and TOLD me to call them and say that I was not going to return. Hell she even called my late mentor and he not only told me the same thing, he took my phone and dialed the number for me.

So yeah, I called told them that this wasn’t for me and never looked back.Now, what company did I sign up for? Well see for yourself…

Kenny.

[My Life] Sins of the Father.

2009-07-21T13:10:00.005-04:00

To say that I have a very complicated relationship with my father would be an understatement and at the same time false. The bottom line is, I had NO relationship with my father. I met him once, talked to him less then a handful of times with each time being more hostile and colder then the last and he did a very good job of keeping my existence a secret from the people in his family, a fact that I only learn in my early to mid-twenties. Now as I get closer to 30, I can admit to the fact that he abandoned me, but as a kid and teen, I felt ashamed by it. It was as if he somehow knew from the start that I was extremely flawed in some kind of way and wanted no part of me because of it. Yup, I am a statistic. I am one of millions of men that did not grow up with a father figure their life. The things I know about him now has come from external forces. The memories of my mother, my brothers, some of his family… and honestly it is nothing good. Without getting so personal to reveal what type of man he is, let’s just say that I am not proud of the things he is reportedly has done. The only reason why I put some much stock in believing that the things told to me is true, is because of the limited interactions that we have had.

In the one and only time meeting him, I expressed that I was too old for him to be some sort of father figure to me, but I want him to be my friend since I was going through that odd time in every man’s life where I was at the crossroads. I needed that guidance from the older generation on things I should and should not do. I don’t know if I was just too naive, delusional or maybe a little bit of both to expect something different would result from this. He told me in no uncertain terms that he never wanted to be in my life from the start. A part of me died when he told me that. What I couldn’t understand was why? What would be the point of creating a life if you want nothing to do with it in the end? Were condoms not invented back in 1980 and the only option was the pull out method that men THINK they know how to do oh so well? But I digress… Sometimes my thoughts drift onto my father from time to time. I don’t know why really. He abandoned me before I even took a breath in the world and I had no choice in the matter. Funny, there was a point in my life where I would’ve forgiven him if he only said he was sorry. Yeah, funny… I hate him; there is no doubt about it. He is the only person in my life that I could honestly say that about and no matter how much therapy I go through I can not seem to let that hate go. He left my brothers, he left me and raised his lighter skinned children. Another funny joke to be made right there isn’t it…

When I was a kid, I always felt like a black sheep. Even through I had a loving mother and grandmother around me, I felt embarrassed as I watched all the other kids who had there father’s with them. I didn’t understand why that couldn’t be me. It lead to me isolating myself, withdrawing from the world around me because I didn’t want to get hurt by anyone. When I started to get to know my father’s side of my family, I felt myself drawing back and retreating, thinking that they were going to be just like him. Cruel, manipulative, deceptive… and I as normally do, disappeared before they could hurt me. I had no proof. I did not have any “Miss Cleo” powers telling me that they would. In fact, they loath him more then me, but I just followed my impulse and ran.

The more I learned about him, the less I wanted to know. I found myself engulfed in the knowledge anyway and it weighed heavily on my mind for sometime. I always wonder what made him the way he was? Was it the Jamaican air? Was it something my grandparents did to him when he was growing up? Or Was he born that way? Nevertheless, the ultimate question that clouds my mind is whether that same frustration, rage and cruelty is a part of me somehow waiting for a catalyst to provoke it. Every time I look in the mirror, I see his face staring back at me, so is it SOOO far fetch to believe that I might have more of his traits that are unseen. Will I do the things that he did and hurt so many people? Am I a carrier of his sins?

Every time I look in the mirror and see the face staring back at me… I just don’t know…

Kenny.

[Poetry] No One Knows

2009-07-04T14:25:00.002-04:00

No one knows what is like to die a little each night.
To hate your own image because it's yours.
No one sees how hard it is to maintain some sense of worth.
Everyone wants to change you.
Make you another carbon copy.
No one knows how vulnerable you become when you let others decide.
It sickens me to the core.
How people surrender.
Giving up all the things that make us different and special.
Conforming to the norm.
No one knows what it's like.
No one.
Except for me.

Kenny

[Lifestyles] Welcome to the Neighborhood… NOW GET OUT!

2009-06-20T16:00:00.004-04:00

Hmmm… Do you ever wonder what kind of person is living next door to you? Or maybe down the block? How about around the corner? At the beginning of last summer, a new neighbor moved next door to me. She was quiet older woman for the most part, but her kids or grandkids were always in and out of the house. About three weeks after they moved in, one of her grandkids got into a fist fight with some “Gangsta”, that do not live in the building might I add, right in front of my door. I mean there was blood, juice and whatever else one my door, a neighbors door, the floor and their door. It was a mess that a neighbor and I cleaned up. Shortly after, people would ring our bell door at all hours of the day and night, mistaken it for theirs. One time I was gearing up to go the laundry at about 4 in the morning (I can’t stand being around those bad ass kids when I am washing clothes) and when I opened the door, I woman was standing there knocking next door wonder who I was! Ain’t that something? While I locked my door, their door open and she speedily ran in. While I waited for the elevator she was making her way towards me, it had to have been less than a minute since the door opened and now.

I will never forget what happened the next day. It was on a Saturday day morning during the first heat wave when I awoke to a loud banging on my door. It was so loud that it woke the whole house. I grabbed a robe and went to the front door and looked through the peephole to see two white men standing there. Surprised, I went into the kitchen to grab a knife (you never know what people are capable of these days) and went back to the door cautiously looking through the peephole once again. At this time they were not in front of my door but next door with one of the men violently kicking at the door. I opened my door and instantaneously they apologized for the noise and showed me the police badges around their necks. I didn’t say a thing. I just closed the door and informed my mother what was going on. The banging continued for about another 15 to 20 minutes until the door finally gave way. After that morning, I have not heard a peep from them. I already concluded that some one in the house was dealing drugs, but the kicker really was that they were doing it right next door.

But there are worst things to have next door to you than a drug dealer.

Above is a map of the neighborhood I lived in. Nothing special about it really, expect for the different color dots that indicate the homes and workplaces of different types of people convicted of some sort of sexual crime (i.e. rape, child molestation, etc…). Here is link to find those in your neighborhood:National Sex Offender Registry When I think of all the kids that run up and down this block, sometimes wearing grown folks clothes, I see how easy they can get picked up. Hey, I understand they did the time for their crimes and need to live somewhere in order to resume some sort of normalcy, but why near me? Yeah, I have a touch of “N.I.M.B.Y.” (Not in my backyard) when it comes to this.

Besides it didn’t surprise me one bit that our local government or whomever would dump these types of people in urban areas like Flatbush, Bedstuy andHarlem. Would they place them in Park Slope, Cobble Hills or and other community where the majority of the residents were Caucasian? Don’t think so… They would be drummed out in no time.

Kenny.

[My Life] It's Over.

2009-06-19T11:15:00.005-04:00

There is a certain time in the morning, where the sunlight sneaks through the windows and kiss every part of your partners body so lovingly as you watch them sleep. They look so peaceful… So beautiful… It’s probably one of the few moments you really get to see them at there most natural. However, the only thought that is running through your head at that particular moment is: WHY WON’T YOU DIE!!! You may not want the person to really die per say… You just want them out of your life for the rest of eternity and beyond. There comes a point where the relationship is over, but only YOU know it. You try and calculate everyway around it, but the reality of the situation shows only one choice. It’s over. Plenty of times people just stay in relationships because they have reached some sort comfort level. I doubt any one would want to risk a sure thing for something unknown. I’ve experienced a few relationships where I mentally checked out weeks or months before it actually ended. Why? Well, honestly I didn’t want to be alone and in rationalizing the problem, I thought if I stuck it out then maybe something will change. Just maybe… But that “maybe” is a false hope. Nothing changed the end result.

Kenny.

[Lifestyles] Home Training Optional

2009-06-14T23:30:00.004-04:00

Coming home after my morning run, aka the sitting on my ass and watching other people run around the park while I drink coffee and smoke cigarettes for an hour, I was really tired from doing nothing and wanted to lay down on my couch and watch some cartoons. Hey, I am being honest… I’m lazy. The lobby was still littered with discarded alcohol bottles and Chinese food cartons, some still with food inside that had acquired several roaches and other cumbersome insects.

I sighed, knowing that the Porter was going to have his hands full once again.

When I opened the elevator door, the fresh all too familiar odor of urine smacked me in the face like a bus. Yeah… Isn’t that special… So I had a choice. Either walk up the stairs or take a ride in the urine stanched elevator. Like I said before, I am lazy, so I got in that elevator stepping over puddles of what I hope was pee and held my breath. This was disgusting. Why would some one pee in the elevator? I tired to avoid any of the walls just in case there was some kind of residue on them. In the few hours since I left for my “morning run”, some one posted new gang graffiti on each of the elevators walls. As I exited on my floor, taking a good deep breath and that proved to be another problem occurred. The incinerator was over stuffed once again with garbage and several mice were running back and forth from the filth and into an apartment across the hall. Is it such a strange concept to actually put your garbage INSIDE the incinerator and closing the door?

It was just another stench, another headache for the Potter and another issue that will be complained about to those with deaf ears. Yes, the Landlords are greedy people who never want to spend a dime on improvements to this building. I understand that fact, but look on how the building is treated by those that live here! How can people put up with this? I asked myself. Hell, how can I put up with this? I’m not a dirty person and our apartment is kept clean so why is it so hard for other people to do the same. Does anyone have some morsel of home training these days? When I was a kid, my mother showed me how to pick up after myself, general cleaning, show pride in my appearance and other essential things that every kid should know. What happen? I finally made a pact with myself that I will not be here by the end of 2009. I need knew horizons or neighbors that I know what the functions of a toilet are. Neighbors that exhibit some form of respect to the place they are living and not just going through the motions.

In the almost 7 years since this buildings has been under new management, they spent money adding brick walls to the lobby and foyer (a useless feat to say the least), raised the rent to the point where there was a mass exodus of people moving out and many were here over 20-something years (Thank God for rent control), moving in anyone on a government program since they know that is a guaranteed payment (many of those people have serious criminal, mental and medical problems, which has lead to many police visits. Something that was never the case BEFORE the building was sold), fired the Super so we now have to hunt down the Super in the adjoining building for anything to be done. At least with our last Super, we had some sense of security because he would not allow people to make a lot of ruckus in hallways during the day and night. If there was any graffiti up… it was washed and/or painted over within an hour. If kids were running around he would tell talk to there parents about letting them go outside. There are plenty of things I can blame the Landlord for, but I can’t blame them for everything that goes on.

Here is my conclusion…

Some people just do not respect the places they live these days. The worst part about that is instead of facing the problem head on, they complain about nothing being done. I am no different here either… I am still learning that when I see litter on the steps, I shouldn’t just walk pass it… I need to pick it up and throw it away. It starts with one person and until I leave, this building is a reflection of the people who live here. I no longer want to be disgusted with walking around in this place.

Kenny.

[Lifestyles] Women of Color

2009-06-05T10:45:00.005-04:00

Today the image of woman of color is one that depicts them as whores, gold diggers and those that lack enough morals to know what’s right and wrong. In the past they were viewed as the back bone of not only the family but the entire community. So what changed? Is it the music industry and there depiction woman, where they can be used and abused and tossed aside like possessions? Or is it just the everyday negative treatment men have for woman within our own community. Many of these young girls try to emulate the adults around them, but in so many cases the only women figures they have are the stereotypes ( i.e. a whore, a gold digger or just plain stupid). There is this struggle today for mothers doing what they are suppose to in raising their daughters, because at every turn they are thrown not thrown positive influences. While at the end of the day, it’s the parent’s job to make sure that they raise stable children, society plays a major part. There have been time when women of color stood up to stop the negative imagery, using the example of the Spellmen women boycotting the Hip Hop artist Nelly from coming to there school for a bone marrow drive, because of a music video for one of his song. Even through I thought the protest over shadowed the real need for those in the African American community to sign up and get there bone marrow tested to help those in need, it was good that finally some one was taking people to task for what they put out there.

So will there every be a time when women of color will regain the respect they lost? Or was it lost in the first place?

Kenny.

[Poetry] The Death of Me

2009-06-05T02:20:00.002-04:00

Crashing waves is all that is below me now.
Bare foot and naked on jagged rocks I see no future.
This is my curse and I accepted it.
I have nothing now, expect for this everlasting pain.
It torments me and leaves me on the edge of madness.
So, it has become true.
You are the death of me.
You left me cold and helpless.
Absent of my shining star.
I am just another victim of your massive chaos.
It ends now.
No more thoughts of you haunting my steps.
No longer will I see visions of your face on others.
I will go quietly into the darkness.
Return to the earth where I once was made.
It's over now.
You have won.
My love for you will die in me.
For you have become the death of me.
There is no longer anything else to say.

Kenny.

[Poetry] Father

2009-04-25T09:07:00.005-04:00

I am being pulled from one corner of the world to the other.

My decisions are no longer my own.

My mind is scattered, broken into pieces, unfixable by human hands.

I feel like I am losing it.

An overwhelming sense of confusion clouds my mind and judgment.

Who can help me now?

Who could push me through this mindless void?

Father, Why aren't you with me showing me the way?

What have I done to warrant such wrath upon me?

I'm drowning, gasping for air, grabbing at what was my life.

Trying to express simple emotion that I once took for granted.

Father can you hear me?

Can't you see the pain and grief in my eyes?

Where is your love that you said was everlasting?

Was it an encouraging lie?

My world is closing in on itself.

Father, can't you see. . .

I'm lost without direction.

Help me, Father!

Help me, please!

Kenny.

[Lifestyles] Sexy...

2009-01-04T11:30:00.003-05:00

Yeah, I know people believe they are the sexist thing since slice bread, but in reality they’re just like everyone else. It’s funny to me how a lot of people use different networking sites like there own personal modeling portfolio. Let’s face some home truths. Not everyone is going to be or can be on American Next Top Model. There is a bigger possibility of hitting the lotto for most people, but yet… some people are willing to post photos of themselves online with as little on as possible. When I first started to use the internet, I was puzzled about how many people out there were willing to show there bodies without getting paid for it. I was 19 and was like a kid in a candy store. I was on a whole bunch of networking websites like Blackplanet, Migente, FortuneCity, and Go to name a few, just looking at people showing it all while pandering to the camera. That was in the late 90’s and early ’00… look how far we have come today… The digital age has made everything just a click away and easy to abuse.

There is no longer a taboo line. We are a culture that aspires to be sexy or reach some sort of perfection in the eyes of others. Some websites like Hotornot.com have users upload there own photo onto the website so strangers can rate them on how they look. What kind of narcissistic behavior is that? How messed is your self esteem if you need strangers to valid your looks? Maybe that’s why I am not a Myspace or Facebook fan. Yeah, I have a page on both website and my Myspace page is all fixed up, but I rarely go on because everywhere I turn you have this one and that one trying to out do each other in how much they are willing to reveal.

These days what makes a person sexy? Is it their attitude? Body image? Bank account? (I personally think an IRA or 401k as very sexy!) Before the less you showed, the sexier you appeared but, now it’s like “Here’s my PENIS! Here’s my VAGINA” bouncing at you at every angle. Here is another home truth… Everyone Online is sexy… Hell, I can tell you I am 6’5, flawless skin with a solid muscle build and have a 14 inch penis! It’s not true of course, but some people are willing to believe that just because I might throw up a photo of some one fitting that description. Amenity is one of those things that the internet is best for. You can live through the eyes of some one for a moment and never reveal your true intention. That is how so many people get caught out there, believing that this drop dead gorgeous guy or girl would ever talk to them and then they see some one completely different in front of them.

If you enjoyed the conversation, phone calls and everything else, why do you care about what a person looks like? And on the flip side… Why would any try and device others with an image of some one that is not who they are?

Is it the sign of times or a progression of things to come? Don’t get me wrong… I like seeing nude bodies just like any man. My porn collection alone on this PC is over 20GB… but there is a limit (not to the porn, but what people should reveal online). A lot of people do not think about the long run. The things we do affect us even if we don’t think it does. Employers can fire an employee if they post certain scandalous photos of themselves online during their off time. Girlfriends, who thought they were sending there boyfriend a private photo of themselves suddenly find them online for the world to see. And let’s not even talk about the celebrities that were caught out there with the nude photo and/or sex tape. Look at the girl in the photo posted to this blog. She is cute, has a nice body and smile. However for the rest of her life she will be known as the girl who didn’t flush after that happy meal! I hope she wiped through because that would be equally as nasty.

“Posting photos of yourself in your underwear, while giving a sly sexy pose online is SOOO 1999.”
Get over yourself!!!*

To me, a person is sexist when they can get into your mind, heart and soul with just their words. Perfection is not the key since no one can claim to be everyone’s ideal. Back in the day there were actors and actresses that were sexy because they knew how to work there flaws and own them as if they weren’t flaws at all. Yup… I admit it. I am beginning to understand the phrase that less is more… revealing everything at once is not sexy, but just another cheap thrill.

Kenny.

*Excluding any one in my contacts that have sexy photos of themselves. I got love for you… so that means don’t curse me out!!!

[Lifestyles] I am

2009-01-03T09:30:00.008-05:00

Who are you? When you look in the mirror what do you see? Do you only see flaws or do you see beauty? How do you define yourself as a human being? When I look at myself mirror, I can find 20 million things wrong. I have too much hair on my face, my arms and legs. I want to get rid of the blackheads on my nose. My ears are a touch too big. I need to get my teeth corrected so I don’t feel insecure and wonder if some one notices the gap on the side. I hate it when some one touches my skin because it turns bright red instantly. I would like to be shorter and have smaller feet, so can just walk into any store and get something and not have to ask if they carry pants/jeans with a 36 length and sneakers/shoes above size 14 and a half. I wish that I was a lot toner and did not have to worry about maintaining a certain weight so I don’t look too full or hungry.

But there in my eyes I see it. That spark of individuality, that no one has but me and I can’t help but to say: Damn, I’m hot!… Despite the superficial imperfection I see, I can still look at the mirror and realize that those flaws do not define me. They don’t make up my personality, my thoughts or my feelings. It’s just another aspect of me that I am aware of. I’ve been called ugly and at the same time I’ve been called handsome. There have been times where I walk into a crowded room and heads turn with people smiling at me and there have been times where I can’t get noticed if my life depended on it. In the end it doesn’t matter, if I can’t look at myself and be happy with what I see, then why bother. Too many people placed themselves into a certain category and want others to follow suit. In modeling, if you don’t look sickly skinny or have that perfect flat stomach with the 6 pack abs, then you are not considered beautiful. Men and women starve themselves, pump chemicals into their bodies and do all kinds of things to reach that goal of being just like everyone in the magazines.

When I was apart of different networking websites, like Yahoo! 360, Multiply, and Myspace, there was always this emphases on being “Official”. You must have the freshest style of clothing, hair and swagger with the banging body style in order to step into their realm of existence. Usually the ones with all the rules are the ones that are far from what they seek. If they can look at others and judge them with such high standards, what does that say about that average person? At times it makes you wonder what being “official” and beautiful really means.

While people are out there these next few weeks trying to redefine themselves so that others approve of there looks and image, I hope they stop and think if they are doing it for themselves or just letting people who really do not care about them define them. I don’t do resolutions, because I suck at them. I tell myself that I am going to stop cursing and five seconds later I am having a torrents fit. So instead of writing this long list of things I would like to change, I just tell myself to be better then I was in the previous year. Be more than what I am and do it with pride, because when I look at the mirror, I see the beauty inside and not the temporary flaws that will always change.

So who am I? I am that friend, that single voice in a crowded room who is willing to speak, that shoulder ready for the tears for those that need it. When I look in the mirror I see it all, the flaws and beauty because I know that the beauty and strength within is the only factor that matters. And finally, how do I define myself?... I am just me.

Now it’s your turn…

Kenny.

[Lifestyles] The New York City Subway Journey.

2009-01-02T07:25:00.003-05:00

I hate the morning rush. It’s full of crowded trains, rude people and constant delays. I really do not understand how I used to do it when I was going to high school back in the day. I remember the time where I was rushing to school on the 3 train and as I entered the Utica Avenue train station, I was surprised how half of the express 4 train was half empty. As I rush to get a seat, the smell of feces and all other kinds of funk hit me right in the face. Man, I was faced with the dilemma of getting a sit and having to deal with smell, or going into another train car and standing all the way. So, I pretty much covered my nose as I sat on the far edge of the car. The things people have to do to get a seat, I tell you what…

As I reentered the education force, waking up at the butt crack of dawn to lugging around a bag of books everywhere, I had relearn how to deal with people. The first week of school was the worst. Every morning and afternoon there was some nut walking back and forth talking about some jargon that I didn’t want to hear. Lucky for me that I had my Mp3 player to drown out the noise, except for that one time where I had to curse this woman out! While going from point A to point B can be a nightmare in itself, some many people are just plain rude for no reason at all.

With rumor of more increases in fares, I wonder when they are going to use some of that money to make the morning journey more pleasurable.

Kenny.